Benign breast disease in a West Indian population

Abstract

A review of 1726 breast lesions in West Indian women from Trinidad showed that the pattern of disease is significantly different from that reported in whites but similar to reports from India and Africa. This difference is mainly due to the high frequency of fibro-adenoma in our adolescent women. Fibro-adenoma was the commonest lesion (39.3 per cent), followed by mammary dysplasia (32 per cent) and carcinoma (21 per cent). Although carcinoma comprised only 21 per cent of all breast lesions, nearly 40 per cent of true neoplasms were malignant. We believe all suspicious breast lumps in black women need biopsy and further analysis of morphological components of benign breast lesions is necessary to evaluate precursors to cancer of the breast.