From 1970 to 1988, 106 women (aged 13-63 years) suffering from phyllodes tumor of the breast underwent surgery at the Day Hospital in the Istituto Nazionale Tumori, Milan. Treatment consisted of enucleation in 57, enucleoresection in 42 and wide resection in seven. Ninety-two cases (86.8%) were benign, 12 (11.3%) borderline and two malignant. All the borderline and malignant tumors were submitted to wider resection as inpatients. The 12 borderline cases underwent wide resection while a subcutaneous mastectomy was performed in the two malignant cases. A mean follow-up of 49 months was carried out on 85 patients (range 1-186). The relapses, all in the benign group (6 cases; 6.52%), were much lower than reported by other authors (20-33%). This may be related to neoplasia size (less than 40 mm in 85.3%) and not to type of limited surgery. Although limited surgery was performed in 93.4% of cases (pre-operative diagnosis being unknown) the number of relapses was so low that re-operation with wider resection in healthy glandular tissue was not justified. However it is still performed in borderline and malignant phyllodes. The natural history of this tumor requires a prolonged follow-up since relapses may occur many months after operation (in our series 52).