[Fibrocystic breast disease--breast cancer sequence]

Fibrocystic breast disease has developed a major issue: the breast cancer sequence. Its involvement regarding the increse of breast cancer risk has 2 aspects: it may be either the marker of a prone tissue or a premalignant hystological deffect. Difficult differential diagnosis of benign proliferative breast lession and carcinoma led to the idea of sequency between the two: cancer does not initiate on normal mammary epithelia; it takes several proliferative stages for it to occur. In our series we analized a number of 677 breast surgical procedures where the pathologic examination reveals 115 cases (17%) of coexistence between cancer and fibrocystic breast disease. This aspect has proved to be related to earlier debut of breast cancer, suggesting that epithelial hyperplasia is a risk factor for breast cancer.