[Breast saving therapy: diagnostic problems in after care]

From 1.1.1977 through 31.12.1985 two hundred seventy-five patients with stages pTis, pT1-2, pN0-1, cM0 breast cancer were treated by breast-conserving therapy. Six patients (2%) were lost to follow-up. Fifty-four patients developed significant subcutaneous or parenchymal induration in the treated breast. The induration was considered clinically suspicious for recurrence in 30/54 and non-suspicious in 24/54. Of the 30 suspicious indurations mammography was diagnostic or suggestive of recurrence in 12 (40%), and the diagnosis of recurrence could be confirmed microscopically in 16 (53%). Mammography showed no pathologic findings in 14/30 (42%) patients with suspicious indurations, and in 12/30 (40%) the impression of benignity was also confirmed microscopically. In patients whose mammograms were diagnostic or suggestive of tumor, malignancy was demonstrated by pathologic examination in all cases. In 21/24 (87.5%) clinically benign indurations no tumor could be found on microscopic examination. Twenty of these patients had a normal mammogram, and in only 1 of these was a recurrence discovered incidentally during a cosmetic operation. Four of the 24 patients with clinically benign indurations had pathologic mammograms, and in 2 of these the diagnosis of recurrence was established histologically. - The rate of agreement between suspicious clinical and mammographic or microscopic findings was about 50%, whereas the correlation for clinically benign indurations was greater than 80%.