Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 17, 2026
Single-Port Robotic-assisted Transaxillary Breast-conserving Surgery: A Prospective, Single-arm, Non-randomized Phase IIa Clinical Trial
Published on: August 19, 2025
Surgeon characteristics and variations in treatment for early-stage breast cancer
Mary Ann Gilligan1, Joan Neuner, Rodney Sparapani
1Department of Medicine, Medical College of Wisconsin, 9200 W. Wisconsin Avenue, Milwaukee, WI 53226, USA. gilligan@mcw.edu
Hypothesis:
Adherence to National Institutes of Health consensus statement recommendations for early-stage breast cancer will vary by surgeon characteristics.
Design:
Secondary data analysis using the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results national tumor registry linked with Medicare claims data. Logistic regression was used to analyze data on a cohort of 1045 surgeons who operated on 9449 Medicare patients with early-stage breast cancer.
Main Outcome Measure:
Care adherent to the 1990 National Institutes of Health consensus statement recommendations.
Results:
Surgeon age and specialty were not associated with adherent care overall, nor among breast-conserving surgery or mastectomy subgroups. Patients of higher-volume surgeons were significantly more likely to undergo adherent care overall because of greater use of lymph node dissection among women who received either breast-conserving surgery or mastectomy. Patients of female surgeons and surgeons with a medical school affiliation were less likely to undergo adherent care overall, which was related to greater use of breast-conserving surgery and lesser use of lymph node dissection among patients who underwent breast-conserving surgery.
Conclusions:
Several surgeon characteristics are significantly associated with variations in breast cancer treatment received. These results warrant further investigation into the association between these surgeon characteristics and cancer care outcomes.
