Nuclear grading in invasive ductal breast carcinomas

Nuclear grade (NG) was studied in cytologic material obtained from 120 fine-needle aspiration biopsies of breast lesions and compared with the NG observed in the nuclear grade of surgical biopsies of the same lesions. All lesions included were invasive breast carcinomas diagnosed cytologically and confirmed histologically. Cytologic aspirates and tissue sections were graded by cytologists and pathologists, respectively, using a multiheaded microscope. Fisher's modification of Black's NG scheme was used. An agreement was observed between the NG of cytologic material and that of surgical biopsies in 93.33% of tumors, and an interesting exercise would be to correlate the NG with other significant factors for the prognosis of breast carcinomas. The purpose of this study was to assign and correlate the NG of ductal carcinomas of the breast in fine-needle aspiration biopsies and tissue specimens from the same patients.