Linell classification of breast cancer morphology compared to histologic grading, S-phase fraction and DNA-ploidy

One hundred and fifty-eight histologically verified mammary carcinomas with known mammographic doubling time (DT) were studied with special emphasis on a morphologic classification proposed by Linell et al. [8, 12, 14, 15]. The hypothesis that Linell classification of ductal carcinomas into comedo, tubuloductal and tubular carcinomas is easy to perform with small inter-observer variations, was not fully confirmed. The Linell classification was found to correlate well with conventional WHO malignancy grading, S-phase fraction and DNA-ploidy. The Linell classification also correlated to surgical stage, lymph node status and DT, but not at all to tumour size. Using distant disease-free survival as an endpoint, the Linell classification gave prognostic information comparable to conventional histologic grading, seeming to be a simple, cheap and reliable method well worth trying on a larger scale.