[Clinico-morphological characteristics of bilateral breast cancer]

During 22 years (1955--1976) in the Department of Endocrinology of the Oncological Research Center of the USSR AMS 2953 patients were treated for primary mammary cancer, 87 (2.9%) of them developed bilateral mammary cancer. The differential diagnosis of primary and metastic cancer was based on the combination of clinical and morphological data: the extent and stage of the process in both mammary glands, localization of tumor nodes, duration of the interval between the development of cancer in the first and the second mammary gland, the absence of relapses and metastases after treatment of the first carcinoma and during a year after the second mastectomy, the degree of malignancy of the tumors, invasion of blood and lymph vessels of the gland and the background against which the tumor had developed.