Long-Term Complications of Surgery and Associated Irradiation as Breast-Conserving Therapy

Abstract

A form of breast-conserving therapy for breast carcinoma initiated by h. lax in 1963 has proved as good as radical surgery with respect to the patients’ chances of survival in our long-term study comparing identical patient populations by means of the retrospective analysis technique of matched samples (matched for tumor size, nodal status, age, degree of histological differentiation, histological type, tumor localization etc.). The patients who underwent the breast-conserving therapy had no worse a result in 5- to 15-year survival than did patients subjected to ablative procedures [2,3]. The problem of local recurrence, however, was greater in the women treated with the breast-conserving therapy. Women who had undergone lumpectomy with subsequent radiotherapy had local recurrence twice as frequently [3] as women in whom ablation was performed, although local recurrence did not worsen the chances of survival [3]. These long-term results of the Berlin retrospective study are confirmed by prospective studies over a period of about 10 years so far: they also show a considerably higher rate of local recurrence but no lower chances of survival with breast-conserving therapy [1,4].