Breast cancer: young, old, and very old. A preliminary report.

A new method of characterizing breast carcinomas is presented that may help further our understanding of this disease. A tumour age coefficient is described, derived from tumour diameter and the mean nuclear area of the tumour cells, the latter a measure of tumour growth rate. On this basis a series of 213 operative infiltrating breast carcinomas is divided into 3 tumour age groups (young, old, and very old). These are then related to axillary nodal status and the patient's age at operation. The likelihood of nodal spread is shown to increase with tumour age. This is interpreted as an expression of a build-up of tumours that have spread with time. There was no set tumour age by which metastatic spread could be expected, but some indication of a lower age limit.