Recent Oncoplastic Approaches in Breast conserving surgery

Abstract

The World Health Organization has ranked breast cancer as the most common type of cancer among women world-wide. The incidence rates of breast cancer vary worldwide, with higher rates in North America, Northern and Western Europe; intermediate rates in South America and Southern Europe; and lower rates in Africa and Asia1.

Breast cancer accounts for 38% of all new cancer cases among women living in Egypt. The age standardized rate (ASR) for breast cancer incidence in Egypt is 37.3 compared to 76 in the United States. Although incidence remains significantly lower than in highly developed countries, rates are steadily increasing 2.

Since the Early Breast Cancer Trialists’ Collaborative Group established the equivalency of mastectomy and breast conserving therapy in 1985, breast conserving surgery has remained the optimal surgical treatment for the breast cancer patient. The goals of breast conserving surgery are the removal of breast cancer with an adequate surgical margin and maintenance of a breast that is cosmetically acceptable to the patient.

Mastectomy with or without breast reconstruction is the treatment of choice when tumor resection and cosmesis is unattainable. Given the understandable desire to preserve a sense of wholeness, it is not surprising that many women consider mastectomy to be an unacceptable cosmetic alternative to breast conserving surgery 3Other trials are now well understood and accepted that prove the importance of combining surgery with adjuvant radiation therapy to lower local-regional recurrence and systemic adjuvant treatment to reduce distant metastatic disease and improve survival.