I picked this up from the lancet web site http://www.thelancet.com
It is long but read the last paragraph, if you are only skimming. It is from
the current lancet Oct 12/96.

Please mention The Lancet as the source of this material
>                  LOOKING INSIDE THE BREAST'S
>                  MILK-DUCTS (pp 997-99)
>
>                  Two doctors from California describe the use of
very-small-diameter tubes which they insert into the milk-ducts in the
nipple of female breasts. They then insert an optical viewer (an endoscope)
down the tube, through which they can also collect cells for examination in
the laboratory. The tubes, which are called cannulas, are about half a
millimetre in diameter. At the moment, breast tissue can be obtained for
examination only during an operation for breast disease or by a technique
called fine-needle aspiration,in which a very-fine needle is inserted into
the breast tissue and a small sample of the tissue is removed.
>
>                  Although insertion of a cannula into the nipple sounds
extreme, the technique is classed as non-invasive by doctors. In the
Californian study described in The Lancet this week, which was a pilot
experiment to test the feasibility of the technique, the patients who
volunteered to help the researchers were actually under general anaesthesia
at the time of the procedure. The patients had a breast tumour or a
condition known as ductal carcinoma-in-situ, which many doctors classify as
a cancer. The two researchers, Susan Love and Sanford Barsky, tried out
their technique just before the surgeon removed the patient's breast (the
operation is called a mastectomy).
>
>                  Love and Barsky were able to insert the cannula in seven
of the nine patients in the study. In five, they obtained epithelial cells
for examination. They found that the changes in the cells were consistent
with the changes they would expect to see in cancerous cells. In some cases,
through theendoscope, they could also see the way the ducts formed
Y-junctions By injecting dyes into the cannulas and then dissecting and
examining the removed breast, they also made a discovery about the anatomy
of the milk ducts. Instead of interlinking ductal systems, as had been
previously suggested, Love and Barsky found ductal systems that intertwined.
>
>                  Contact: John Dreyfuss , Office of Public Information,
Jonsson
>                  Comprehensive Cancer Center at UCLA, Los Angeles, California,
>                  USA; tel +1 310 206 2805.
>
>                  Please mention The Lancet as the source of this material
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