Breast cancer

This year, manuscripts addressed numerous pertinent breast cancer issues. Notable conclusions from each of the discussed sections suggest that: (a) oral contraceptives do not increase a woman's risk for breast cancer; (b) the vast majority of women with resected premalignant breast lesions do well for prolonged periods after diagnosis regardless of therapy; (c) satisfactory cosmetic results can occur with either lumpectomy, axillary nodal dissection, and radiotherapy or with mastectomy and breast reconstruction; (d) the primary tumor thymidine labeling index can give prognostic information; (e) immunohistochemical methods can accurately measure tumor estrogen receptors; (f) there are multiple hormonal therapies of similar efficacy; (g) two new single agent chemotherapy drugs deserving further investigation are idarubicin and lonidamine; (h) none of several combination chemotherapy regimens is clearly superior to any of the other 'standard' regimens; (i) there is a lack of consensus among the conclusions of recent adjuvant breast cancer consensus conferences held in the United States and London; (j) inflammatory breast cancer patients treated with initial combination chemotherapy consistently appear to have improved relapse-free and overall survivals when compared to historical controls; and (k) the prognosis in locally recurrent breast cancer patients is better in those previously treated with lumpectomy and irradiation when compared to those previously treated with mastectomy.