REVIEW f t i d o

and, therefore, in most patients mastectomy can be regarded as the safer surgical treatment. The ILC are also complicated by the particular Epidemiological data have shown that the incidence 2002, Newcomb et al. 2002, Newcomer et al. 2003, Endocrine-Related Cancer (2007) 14 549–567and invasive ductal–lobular mixed carcinoma (IDLC)than that of invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC; Li et al. diagnosis, surgical and medical treatment.rates of lobular breast tumours have increased over the past decades mainly among postmenopausal women, whereas the incidence rates of invasive ductal tumours have remained stable since 1987 (Li et al. 2000a). There is considerable evidence that the use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is more strongly associated with the risk of both invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC) Biglia et al. 2005). These data may have remarkable clinical significance because the use of HRT has increased steadily over the past decades (Hemminki et al. 1988, Wysowski et al. 1995, Wysowski & Governale 2005) until the publication of WHI trial (Rossouw et al. 2002); moreover, ILC and IDC have different clinical behaviours. The aim of this review is to review the biological and clinical features of ILC as compared with IDC and the potential implications forIntroduction 2000a,b, 2003a,b,c, Chen et al. 2002, Daling et al.metastatic pattern of such histotype. In fact, metastases are more frequently distributed to the gastrointestinal tract, peritoneum/retroperitoneum and gynaecological organs than in IDC