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.