Nuclear morphology in breast cancer: Is pleomorphism an illusion?

Nuclear pleomorphism is an underlying theme of cancer histology. Any medica l practitioner, not just the pathologist, would have at one time or another in a Pathology practical class, looked at histopathology slides and convin ced himself or herself that cancer cells indeed looked more variable in siz e and shape than nontumorigenic cells. However, data from our nuclear morph ometric analysis of cells in breast cancer and adjacent benign tissues appe ars to suggest that the larger size of the cancer cell nuclei could make an y change in nuclear shape and size more noticeable and apparent than their benign counterparts. We hypothesize that the phenomenon of nuclear pleomorp hism is due partly to observational subjectivity. (C) 2000 Harcourt Publish ers Ltd.