Benign breast biopsy diagnosis and subsequent risk of breast cancer.

Background: We examine benign breast biopsy diagnoses as reported by community pathologists in New Mexico and investigate associations with future breast cancer development.

Methods: Using data collected between 1992 and 2000 by the New Mexico Mammography Project and cancer data through 2003 from the New Mexico Tumor Registry, we calculated breast cancer rates following 14,602 benign breast biopsies for women ages 30 to 89 years. For comparison, we also calculated the breast cancer rate following 215,283 normal screening mammograms.