Breast cancer report.

The recent increased public awareness of the necessity for early diagnosis of breast cancer has been accentuated by an intense exposure by the news media centering about the disease. This publicity includes the unfortunate but timely clinical sources of the wives of the President and the Vice President of the United States, Mrs. G.F. Ford and Mrs. N.A. Rockefeller. This paper attempts to quantitate in a subjective manner the impact of the events on the American public by comparing the incidence of operative procedures in similar populations in the Nashville community during October through December, 1973, and October through December, 1974, the latter period following the operative procedures upon Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Rockefeller. A statistically significant increase was noted in patients seen, biopsies performed, and cancers detected.