[An unusual clinical form of intraductal breast carcinoma: an inflammatory syndrome. Apropos of 5 cases].

The authors report 5 cases of in situ intraductal breast carcinoma (IDC) revealed or complicated by a clinical inflammatory syndrome. These cases showed some common features with other IDCs, such as mammographic signs and histologic forms of epitheliamatous proliferation, but were also characterized by clinical inflammatory signs different from those of rapidly developing "inflammatory" cancer, frequent nipple discharge, frequent positive results in bacteriologic examinations of nipple discharge and the role of cytologic studies of discharge in determining a definite diagnosis of carcinoma. Some hypotheses as to etiology are also discussed.