RESUMO
This presumptive study concerns the value of lumpectomy as a curative procedure for minimal breast carcinoma, defined as an operable cancer no larger than 2 cm in diameter, with no palpable axillary lymph nodes, and, in peripherally located lesions, no Paget's disease. From 199 surgically treated mammary cancer patients, 40 cases met the minimal criteria. Thirty-eight of the minimal breast carcinoma patients had a radical mastectomy and two had a supraradical procedure. The pathology findings and survival data were analyzed in these minimal carcinoma cases, and it was calculated that lumpectomy alone would have left cancer cells in 48% of the patients because of regional lymph node involvement by cancer, extension of cells from a peripheral cancer to the nipple ducts, or presence of a second carcinoma in the breast. However, the estimated 30-year cure rate in these radical surgically treated patients was 86%.
