Patients with nonmetastatic invasive breast tumours >5 cm are usually not eligible for lumpectomy and radiation as a treatment option; instead, mastectomy is considered as a safer therapeutic choice for these patients. Now a study has evaluated data from 5,685 patients with breast tumours >5 cm who underwent breast surgery between 1992 and 2009. Only 15.6% of these patients underwent breast-conserving surgery. The adjusted overall and breast-cancer-specific survival rates were equivalent regardless of whether the patients underwent mastectomy or breast-conserving surgery.
References
Bleicher, R. J. et al. Breast conservation versus mastectomy for patients with T3 primary tumors (>5 cm) a review of 5685 medicare patients. Cancer 10.1002/cncr.29726
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Romero, D. Mastectomy — not always required. Nat Rev Clin Oncol 13, 2 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrclinonc.2015.198
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrclinonc.2015.198