Breast cancer treatment--current status. 3. Simple excision with irradiation

Although radical dissection has been standard treatment for breast cancer for over 80 years, sharp controversy persists regarding the best management for early breast cancer. The trend over the past 20 years has been toward progressively limited surgery followed by irradiation. Recently, results of several retrospective series of early breast cancer in which simple excision of a small tumor was followed by aggressive irradiation showed that tumor control and relapse-free survival rates were equivalent to those achieved by other therapies. Further confirmation of these findings is needed before this breast-sparing technique can become the treatment of choice in early breast cancer.