The importance of pathology in prognosis and management of breast cancer

The contribution of pathology to the treatment and the prognostic determination of breast cancer patients is clearly demonstrated by the conspicuous number of articles that have been published on the subject in the last 2 decades. Since a complete review of them is impossible, this analysis places major emphasis on the practical aspects of the morphological work. Reference to our own unpublished work is also made. This refers to the histology of the primary carcinoma in 900 consecutive radical mastectomies, to the lymphatic spread in the last 300 of these and to the tumor size and metastatic extension in a selected series of 300 mastectomies performed in T ₁N ₀ cases.