Morphometric and histological study of breast lesions with special reference to proliferative activity and invasiveness.

Breast carcinoma is the most common cause of carcinoma death in women. Sometimes, difficulty arises to differentiate between premalignant lesions and carcinoma by routine histopathology. Our study was done to establish the role of morphometry and immunohistochemistry to solve this problem. In this study, total 60 cases of different breast lesions were included and 10 controls were also included to compare the results with the normal findings. They were studied by hematoxylin and eosin-stained sections for morphometry and routine histological study; as well as by proliferative markers such as proliferating cell nuclear antigen and p53. Invasiveness was studied using immunohistochemical staining with 34 βE12 monoclonal antibody. Statistically significant differences were found in morphometric parameters and in expression of proliferative markers between most of them. Morphometry and immunohistochemistry help in the proper diagnosis of different breast lesions that lie in the gray zone on routine histopathology.