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Rosen’s Breast Pathology, Third Edition, by P.P. Rosen (2009)
This book is hot off the presses and considered the gold-standard text in the field of breast pathology.  By definition pathology is “the study of the essential nature of diseases and especially the structural and functional changes produced by them."

Surgical pathology is considered the study of tissues from the living.  This is a large, clinical textbook that provides a comprehensive and extensively illustrated description of breast pathology covering the entire spectrum of breast disease.  The book also has a companion website, www.rosenbreastpathology.com, offering fully searchable text and an image bank.  The book is organized into 44 chapters with each chapter containing extensive images of stained breast tissue as seen under the microscope.  To lay readers these images will not be fully understandable but the accompanying descriptions of clinical breast tissue abnormalities will allow some comprehension.  The Introduction is well worth reading, especially as the author discusses vital topics such as second opinions in breast pathology, as well as the future of tissue microarray (biomarkers) and gene expression profiling in breast cancer.

Since this is a 2009 edition, the information and study data presented, along with extensive references, are very current.  Chapters that I considered of note included those on ductal hyperplasia and precancerous breast disease; Paget’s disease of the nipple; and unusual clinical presentations of carcinoma (this chapter included inflammatory carcinoma).

I found the chapter on pathologic effects of therapy very educational—learning exactly how radiation and chemotherapy treatments produce changes to our tissues at the microscopic level.  Perhaps the final chapter is the most important one from a patient’s perspective.  This chapter focuses on breast biopsies as well as a section on sentinel lymph node biopsy and mapping.

Although the book is written with a focus on the needs of the surgical pathologist, I foresee this breast disease “encyclopedia” as becoming a valuable resource for BCC clients. I also encourage BCC volunteers, particularly Helpliners, to become familiar with the contents of this textbook—you’ll find that by using the extensive index you will be referring to this book regularly.
 
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