Benign Proliferative Breast Disease: A Histopathological Review of Cases at Korle Bu Teaching Hospital

Background:​ With the increasing education on breast cancer, most women are reporting to the hospital with breast lumps most of which are benign breast lesions. Benign breast diseases constitute a heterogeneous group of lesions including developmental abnormalities, inflammatory lesions, epithelial and stromal proliferation and neoplasms. This is to look at the various histologic type of benign proliferative breast diseases among Ghanaian women.

Method​s: This is a retrospective study of breast excisions received between 2006-2013 at the Department of Pathology, Korle Bu teaching hospital (KBTH), Ghana. All histological slides were retrieved and examine. Demographic information was also retrieved from the request form. The data was subject to analysis using SPSS version 16.5 and Windows Excel.

Results​: During the period of study, 2,805 cases of benign breast lesions were received by the department, out of which 2,396 were proliferative benign lesions representing 89.4%. The top five lesions were fibroadenoma (89.01%), fibroadenomatoid hyperplasia (3.26%), tubular adenoma (2.51%), benign phylloides tumour (1.71%) and intraductal papilloma (1.59%). The average ages of clients with these lesions were 24 years (±8.3 years), 28 years (±10.7 years), 22.7 years (±15 years), 38 years (±14.2 years and 45.4 years (±8.3 years) respectively. Fibroadenoma and benign phelloides tumour have a preponderance to the right and left breast respectively with statistical significance.

Conclusion​: There are some differences between benign breast lesions in Ghanaian women as compared to other African countries within the Sub Saharan region.