Experience with 132 Cases of Breast Conservation Surgery

ABSTRACT

Recently, "Breast Conserving Therapy" (BCT) in the early-stage breast cancer has spread rapidly in Korea, as is in western world. For the evaluation and the standardization of BCT in Korea, a randomized study of 132 patients with breast cancer who received BCT was performed. Of the 401 patients with breast cancer who were admitted to Yongdong Severance Hospital from Feb. 1991 to Jan. 1996, 116 patients with stage I/II breast cancer and 15 patients with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) had BCT and 173 patients with stage I/II breast cancer received modified radical mastectomy (MRM). In order to evaluate the BCT, the clinicopathologic features, locoregional recurrence, distant metastasis, actuarial overall survival rate and disease-free survival rate were analyzed during the follow-up period (a minimum of 1 month, a maximum of 58 months and a mean of 32 months). The results are as follows 1) Three out of the 116 BCT patients with stage I/II and 5 out of 173 MRM patients with stage I/II had locoregional recurrence. 2) For BCT, the actuarial overall survival rate was 94.9% and disease-free survival rate was 87.6%; however, for MRM, the actuarial overall survival rate was 96.6% and the disease-free survival rate was 83.9%. Hence, there was no statistically significant difference between BCT and MRM. 3) Patient with DCIS who had BCT experienced neither locoregional recurrence nor distant metastasis. 4) All patients were good to excellent in their cosmetic appearance. In conclusion, BCT can be a good alternative surgical treatment modality and can substitute for MRM with the patients with early-stage breast cancer, including DCIS, in Korea. However, further follow up study will be needed to assess the long term results.