Breast cancer in Nigeria.

Breast cancer as seen in 116 Nigerian women over a 5-year period, 1974 to 1979, at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital, Benin, Nigeria, is presented. The disease occurs one decade earlier in Nigerians and is mainly a disease of premenopausal and perimenopausal women. Reflecting their relative youthfulness, more than 10% of them are pregnant or lactating on presentation. The most common histologic finding is anaplasia with very unfavorable histological grade. Breast cancer does not seem to have a different biologic behaviour in Nigerians, but it carries a truly bleak prognosis because many of the patients present with incurable disease that is close to its end stages.