[Comparison of quandrantectomy and Halsted's radial mastectomy. Personal cases]

The authors review all the breast diseases and tumours observed from 1972 through 1979 at the Division of Surgery, Hospital of Rapallo. On the basis of personal experience they discuss the possibility that, in the treatment of early breast cancer, a relatively conservative surgery (i.e. quadrantectomy), followed by postoperative radiotherapy and adjuvant chemotherapy in the N+ cases, give no worse results than standard radical mastectomy, in preventing local relapses and distant metastases, and therefore in conditioning both free-of-disease interval and survival of the patients, as many Authors in these last years have well shown either for quadrantectomy or other conservative procedures. This retrospective study particularly evaluates the results of 12 quadrantectomies performed in Stage I and II, compared to 8 Halsted radical mastectomies in the same Stages: all patients in the two groups survive free of disease (follow-up for the quadrantectomies from 6 to 41 months). Furthermore 4 cases of Stage III breast cancer are presented, 2 treated with Halsted procedure: in the first case the death occurred at 19 months, after the development of distant metastases, while in the second local relapses have been observed at 11 and 30 months; 2 patients were treated with quadrantectomy, as they didn't accepted a radical procedure: both survive free of disease at 17 and 23 months respectively.