Outcome of one hundred and forty-nine consecutive breast biopsies in Ibadan, Nigeria.

Objective: To study the outcomes of one hundred and forty nine consecutive breast biopsies in both male and female patients in one arm of the general surgery division of the department of surgery, university college hospital Ibadan.

Methodology: A retrospective study of the case files and histopathology reports of 149 patients who had biopsies of the breast from May 1996 to September 2004.

Results: The study showed that below the age of 30 years, there was no malignancy detected in 85 breast biopsies, however as the age increased it was seen that less than one out of four biopsies were malignant when the patients were aged between 31 and 40 years, rising to one out of four biopsies for the 41-50 and 51-60 age-groups. The 61-70 yielded roughly one out of three whilst two out of three breast biopsies were malignant in the 71-80 age-groups.

Conclusions: Majority of breast lumps are benign and women have a probability of one chance in 10 that their biopsies may be malignant. However under 30 years this is unlikely. Above the age of 40 years the chance of malignancy rises to a one in four which will strongly support screening methods for women above 40 years. For record purposes, fibroadenoma is still the most common breast lesion in women under 30 years and invasive ductal carcinoma is the most common histopathological type of breast cancer in Ibadan, Nigeria.