Paraffin-embedded biopsy specimens from the primary breast carcinomas of 653 women were subjected to histopathological assessments of the potential prognostic factors. Histological type, histological grade, nuclear pleomor-phism, tubule formation, intraductal growth pattern, tumour margin circumscription, tumour necrosis and inflammatory cell reaction were semiquantita-tively analysed with special reference to disease outcome during the mean follow-up 12.8 years. Histological grade, nuclear grade and inflammatory cell reaction were related to axillary lymph node involvement at operation (p