The 28 Centers involved in the Breast Cancer Detection Demonstration Projects were initiated in 1973. The five-year commitment of some of these Projects will be completed during this calendar year, and those of others as late as 1981. The material available to us from the group of women studied is useful, but the accumulation of these data through the computer is still painfully slow. The last completed data available from the computer are those compiled through February 1979. They showed 273,108 women having completed their first examination, and the total number of examinations-1,011,709.
In the breast biopsies that have been performed on patients from the study group, 85% have shown benign lesions, 14% have revealed invasive carcinoma, and 1% have shown preinvasive carcinoma, so-called carcinoma in situ. In general, these tumors have been at very early biological stages in the development of the breast cancers. Some slightly less impressive figures have been obtained in those individuals who have discovered their cancers as a product of regular breast self-examination. The techniques of the survey clearly show that breast cancer can be picked up in a biologically earlier state and at a stage more amenable to definitive therapy.