[A new technic for examining breast amputation specimens. Results of 11 cases of Paget's disease of breast].

Mammectomy specimens fixed to maintain their anatomical shape may be cut in slices parallel to the thoracic wall. The resulting histologic slides (serially cut or single) always show all the ducts. With a comparatively small number of slides, the galactophoric system may be explored as a whole from the nipple to the surgical section. This technic is especially efficient to establish the extent of the intraductal lesions of the Paget's disease, their relation with the nipple and with a possibly associated invasive cancer. It leads to propose three groups of related lesions, the disease of the nipple being constant: 1 - an infiltrating cancer unrelated to the intraductal cancer. 2 - an infiltrating cancer associated to part of the ducts involved by intraductal cancer, several ducts in a distant part of the breast being involved too by intraductal carcinoma. 3 - intraductal cancer without invasive cancer. These facts and the topography of the intraductal carcinoma are inconsistent with the conception of cells from an invasive cancer reaching the epidermis of the nipple by spreading through the ducts.