[Changes in the surgical treatment of breast cancer]

The principle in surgery for breast cancer is to clean out and remove en masse the primary lesion within the breast as well as the lymph nodes (metastases) in the vicinity. This fundamental approach to surgical intervention was established by Halsted and Meyer at the close of the nineteenth century. This has been termed typical mastectomy to this day and standard radical mastectomy has been the method used. Later, a more expanded type of radical surgery was performed on somewhat more advanced cases, but a less radical approach then came about. Since 1960, the excision of nodes in the cerebrum and cerebellum was not used for early cancer, and in some cases a more conservative approach in which only part of the breasts was removed resulted, as Europe and the United States were heavily toward reduced operations. Thus, it was considered that axillary expurgation was needed, but that excision of nodes in the cerebrum and cerebellum was not essential in every case. One approach is less aggressive, whether as to the expurgation or excision of the surrounding area of the breast; in certain cases, treatment may be combined with radiation and the surgery minimized. The above-mentioned operative procedure which leaves brain nodes intact has been called modified radical mastectomy. This is subdivided into the Auchincloss method, in which modes in the cerebellum are extirpated, and the Patey method, in which the cerebral nodes are preserved. In Japan this approach has been used for breast cancer in Stage I and Stage II, with surgery gradually becoming the mainstream. Conservative breast operation procedures such as tumor extirpation, partial breast removal or segmental resection are still rare in Japan but very common in Europe and the United States. Since remote metastases frequently occur through the circulation in breast cancer, in recent years it has generally been regarded as a whole-body disease and, in terms of the advance of the cancer in each case, the method of surgery is selected. There is a strong tendency to combine surgery with other methods (radiation, chemotherapy, hormonal therapy).