Search

The history of the evolution of thought about the treatment of breast cancer is reviewed. First the surgery was too radical, then radiation was overused; soon perhaps adjunctive chemotherapy will be overused. We should continue to search for new methods such as combinations of heat and radiation that might maintain or increase the immunologic resistance of the host.

Partial mastectomy without radiation therapy has been used at The Cleveland Clinic as a treatment option for selected patients with breast cancer since 1957. Our experience with 322 patients has been reviewed; survival results are equal to or better than the other operative procedures we have employed for the treatment of breast cancer. These results, we believe, relate more to the selection of patients with small tumors and at a more favorable stage of the disease than to the benefit of the operative procedure itself.

Since surgeons rarely write articles about simple minor operations that are easily performed in the office, there is a great reliance on techniques learned in medical school or from other surgeons. Some of these techniques are cumbersome and make relatively major procedures of operations that can be performed quite simply.