Cancer of the Breast

The histochemical assay for the detection of putative estrogen receptors as described by Lee has now been tested by several investigators on tumors of the breast. The histochemical method may readily be performed in most laboratories of anatomic pathology and mastered by personnel adequately experienced in breast cancer morphology as well as fluorescence microscopy. There is abundant evidence that the size of breast cancers at the time of first diagnosis is decreasing. In the hospital of Busto Arsizio, patients with breast cancer have been treated by conventional means and, more recently, according to the Foncam protocols. This chapter considers the clinical and histologic parameters in relation to steroid binding: age distribution, tumor size (T), lymph node involvement (N), pathological staging, tumor margin, multicentricity, histotype, vascular invasion, and clinical course of disease. Patients with primary breast cancers were stratified in two ways as premenopausal (<44 years), perimenopausal (45 to 54 years), and postmenopausal (>55 years); and other by 5-year periods.