[Surgery for advanced breast cancer from the viewpoint of medical oncologist]

The incidence of breast cancer is increasing among Japanese women. It is an important issue to prevent breast cancer and develop therapy for it. Breast cancer is recognized as a systemic disease due to early micrometastases, and multimodality treatment is needed. Development of newer and more effective chemotherapy and hormone therapy contributes to improvement in survival for breast cancer patients. But the optimal treatment for locally advanced breast cancer is still not established. Here we describe multimodality treatment to clarify the role of each modality, especially surgery for locally advanced and metastatic breast cancer.