Disappearing grouped breast calcifications: An ominous sign. 2020

Brielle Paolini, and Rebecca Leddy, and Abid Irshad
Department of Radiology, Medical University of South Carolina, 169 Ashley Ave, Charleston, SC 29425, USA.

Spontaneous disappearing breast calcifications is a rarely-reported phenomenon and the relatively small number of studies that have been done mostly associated the resolution of benign-appearing breast calcifications with benign processes. We present a case of a postmenopausal woman who had spontaneously resolving grouped, coarse heterogenous calcifications in the setting a new soft tissue mass which was pathologically proven to be invasive ductal carcinoma. A handful of studies have shown the resolution of indeterminant calcifications to be associated with malignancy, and interestingly, all of these cases also demonstrated a new parenchymal abnormality which is akin to the present case. Overall, the majority of benign-appearing spontaneous resolving microcalcifications likely are related to benign processes; however, radiologists should be aware of the association of disappearing grouped, indeterminant calcifications with the resulting development of malignancy, especially in the presence of a nearby, newly-forming soft tissue mass.

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