Peritumoral lymphatic invasion in patients with node‐negative mammary duct carcinoma

Five hundred six consecutive cases of ductal infiltrating carcinoma of the breast (T1‐T2,N0,M0) were evaluated to define the frequency of peritumoral lymphatic invasion (PLI) and verify its possible prognostic significance. Histologically, PLI was characterized by the presence of neoplastic emboli within vascular lumina lined by recognizable endothelial cells, adjacent to but outside the margins of the carcinoma. In routine histopathologic assessment the frequency of PLI was 6.9% whereas in a randomly selected group of 234 reviewed cases the frequency rose to 20%. Patients with routinely evaluated PLI had a worse prognosis than those without PLI with reference both to disease‐free survival (P = 0.0001) and total survival rates (P = 0.0001). The difference for local recurrences was prognostically highly significant (P = 0.0001) and also significant for the development of metastases (P = 0.0576). In the reviewed material the difference in prognosis between PLI‐positive and PLI‐negative cases was not confirmed for total survival whereas the significance for the disease‐free interval persisted. The assessment of PLI, carried out following strict histopathologic criteria, appears to select a group of node‐negative breast cancer patients who have an increased risk of recurrences and might benefit from a treatment different from that reserved for node‐negative and PLI‐negative patients. Cancer 1992; 69:1396‐1403.