[Diagnostic and pretherapeutic management of breast cancer]

Breast cancer diagnostic is based on clinical examination, mammographic and echographic findings and the results of pathological samplings. The development of breast cancer screening has led to the discovery of numerous infraclinical lesions and in spite of this, clinical examination remains very important to perform, and useful for staging. Thank to the progresses of mammography and echography the size of discovered tumors has regularly shrunk within 15 years. Quality control is a necessity to obtain good and liable results. The ultrasonographic and stereotactic guidances are very useful to improve the localisation of subclinical breast cancers for sampling as well as for the quality and the precision of the surgery. The pretherapeutic staging needs to be tailored to each case and can be helped by biological markers, chest X-ray, bone scan and hepatic ultrasonography.