the study of relationship between aggresive ductal breast carcinoma and axillary lymph node involvement

breast cancer is a major cause of mortality in women due to malignant diseases and is the most prevalent type of cancer in western countries. according to investigations which has been done in iran so far, the prevalence of disease in our country is also very high, therefore complete attention to clinical and pathological findings of this disease would be extremely essential. in this study, the direct relationship between axillary lymph node involvement and the aggressiveness of invasive ductal carcinoma has been brought into consideration. this study is a case series of 90 patients which all of them have had radical mastectomy because of breast cancer and all their samples has been referred to the center of pathology of imam hospital. based on modified bloom-richardson grading, all the samples have been graded. the study of all lymph node samples related to above cases has also been conducted along with the main study. the most frequent ages of disease was 31 to 40 and left breast had most involvement. from all cases, 12.2% were in grade i with 27.2% lymph node involvement, 66.7% grade ii with 73.4% lymph node involvement and 21.1% in grade iii with 100% lymph node involvement (p=0.00008). based on statistical analysis we concluded that the axillary lymph node involvement in breast cancer is strongly associated with the aggressiveness of invasive ductal carcinoma. this important point should not be neglected in planning for treatment of this kind of disease.