Premalignant disease: the breast.

Premalignant disease of the breast is a controversial and evolving area of medical research. Breast cancer remains the number one cause of death in women in the US between the ages of 40 and 55 and ultimately causes about 4% of all deaths in women. Efforts to identify women at increased risk are of tremendous importance both clinically and from an insurance perspective. To make appropriate underwriting decisions, we need to evaluate proposed markers of increased risk with respect to what is known about how they affect short-term and/or long-term mortality.