Abstract: From 1978 to 1994, 7630 cases of breast cancer were admitted in Tianjin Cancer Institute and Hospital, among which 81 cases of papillary carcinoma were diagnosed. Papillary carcinoma had its own characteristic which was different from other breast cancers in clinical and pathological features. It were noticed that the older age of the patients,the prolonged duration of symptoms prior to the surgery, larger tumor size, usually presenting nipple discharge and most of the lesions were cystic. Among them 36 cases were non-invasive breast cancer, 20 cases were early invasive breast cancer and 25 cases were invasive breast cancer respectively. Axillary lymph node metastasis was observed in 16 cases (21.7%). The differential diagnosis between benign papillary tumor and papillary carcinoma, especially intracystic papillary carcinoma was sometime difficult in frozen sections.The prognosis of papilllary carcinoma was good, which the 5—year disease—free survival rate was 89.3% and that of 10-year was 80%.