Inflammatory local recurrence during TC chemotherapy after breast-conserving surgery: a case report

Introduction

Inflammatory local recurrence after breast-conserving therapy is very rare and these patients always have poor prognosis.¹ In common, the recurrence happens in a median of 65 months for lymph node negative patients. Fast recurrence is usually be considered correlated with ER status, lymph node status and tumor size.

Case description

A 70-year-old female patient had left breast conserving surgery in PUMCH on 2016-4-19, pathological results showed an IDC (triple negative) and the margins of the tumor were clear. Then she began chemotherapy (Taxol+CTX, 3 week regimen) on 5-22. At the end of June, she had a skin lesion on the left breast. We continued chemotherapy to 7-22, TC*4 in total. During this, the patient's skin lesion turned bigger and the therapy had no effect on this. We took the skin for biopsy and the skin and lymphatic was filled with breast cancer metastases.

Conclusion

Locally recurrence can happen in patients having had breast-conserving surgery. However, in our case, the patient has rare inflammatory local recurrence after breast conserving surgery very rapidly, even during chemotherapy. Just 2 months after surgery. So we think that the inflammatory skin lesion on breast cancer patients must be taken seriously and do biopsy as soon as possible.