Cytophotometrical and biochemical characterization of nonpalpable, mammographically detected mammary adenocarcinomas

Abstract

Fifty nonpalpable, mammographically detected, invasive breast carcinomas were analysed with respect to DNA distribution pattern, steroid receptor content, and histopathological criteria. No significant histomorphological differences were found as compared to palpable breast carcinomas. In contrast, DNA distributions of palpable and nonpalpable tumors differed. Ninety percent of these relatively small breast carcinomas were found to exhibit nuclear DNA amounts within the diploid and tetraploid regions of normal breast epithelium. In earlier findings in palpable breast carcinomas, 55% are of the diploid-tetraploid type. The mean cellular content of the estrogen receptor was 1.0 h o l e / pg DNA in this group of mammographically detected carcinomas, which is significantly higher than in routinely detected, ie, larger, breast carcinomas. It is suggested that, despite the histomorphological findings, nonpalpable, mammographically detected breast carcinomas are dominated by biologically highly differentiated, slowly proliferating carcinomas with a favourable prognosis.

DNA flow cytometric analysis indicates that many breast cancers detected in the first round of mammographic screening have a low malignant potential

“…The present study population was drawn from an organized mammography screening program with a high attendance rate and the results were exclusively based on cancers detected in the prevalence screening. Fallenius et al (1984) have published a static image cytometric study of non-palpable minimal breast cancers found by mammography, but not by prevalence screening. In their material, only 10% of the cancers were DNA-aneuploid, considerably less than the 46% detected by us.…”

Comparing core needle to surgical biopsies in breast cancer for cell kinetic and ploidy studies

“…Most of them have dealt with morphological aspects [12] and DNA content [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12], and only a few with the rate of cell proliferation [4]. In addition, only a few studies [7,9] have compared DNA content defined on FNAs or core needle biopsies at the time of diagnosis to that detected on the correspondent whole tumor specimen at the time of surgery for patients who had not been given any intercurrent therapy.…”

“…A number of studies have been addressed to obtaining additional biological information of potential diagnostic or prognostic relevance from such material [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. Most of them have dealt with morphological aspects [12] and DNA content [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12], and only a few with the rate of cell proliferation [4].…”