Mammary ductal carcinoma surgery

Treatment options for Ductal Carcinoma in Situ
DCIS patients have two surgery strategy choices. They are lumpectomy (most commonly followed by radiation therapy) or mastectomy.

Lumpectomy is surgery that removes only the cancer and a rim of normal breast tissue around it. For women with only one area of cancer in their breast, and a tumor under 4 centimeters that was removed with clear margins, lumpectomy followed by radiation is often equivalent to mastectomy for mortality related to their cancer, albeit at the higher risk of local disease recurrence on the breast/chest wall. The addition of radiation therapy to lumpectomy in DCIS reduces the risk of local recurrence by about 58% as compared to excision alone. Lumpectomy with radiation is estimated to carry between a 12-19% chance at 15 years for local recurrence of breast cancer (approximately a 0.5% to 1.0% risk per year), which would require a "salvage mastectomy".

Patients with family history of breast cancer and those presenting with breast cancer who are less than 40 years old face higher risks of local recurrence with breast conservation techniques. Extensive DCIS of high grade, large size, and resected with minimal surgical margins, even with radiotherapy, results in recurrence rates of at least 50% and would be better served with a mastectomy procedure.

Mastectomy may also be the preferred treatment in certain instances:
 * Two or more tumors exist in different areas of the breast (a "multifocal" cancer).
 * Failure to achieve adequate margins on attempted lumpectomy.
 * The breast has previously received radiation (XRT) treatment.
 * The tumor is large relative to the size of the breast.
 * The patient has had scleroderma or another disease of the connective tissue, which can complicate XRT treatment.
 * The patient lives in an area where XRT is inaccessible
 * The patient is apprehensive about their risk of local recurrence
 * The patient is less than 40 or has a strong family history of breast cancer

The system for analysing the suitability of DCIS patients for the options of breast conservation without radiation, breast conservation with radiation, or mastectomy is called the VanNuys Prognostic Scoring Index (VNPI). This VNPI analyzes DCIS features in terms of size, grade, surgical margins, and patient age and assigns "scores" to favourable features.

Tamoxifen or another hormonal therapy is recommended for some women with DCIS to help prevent breast cancer. Hormonal therapy further decreases the risk of recurrence of DCIS or the development of invasive breast cancer. However, they have potentially dangerous side effects, such as increased risk of endometrial cancer, severe circulatory problems, or stroke. In addition, hot flashes, vaginal dryness, abnormal vaginal bleeding, and a possibility of premature menopause are common for women who were not yet menopausal when they started treatment.

Unlike women with invasive breast cancer, women with DCIS do not undergo chemotherapy and have traditionally not been advised to have their lymph nodes tested or removed. Some institutional series reporting significant rates of recurrent invasive cancers after mastectomy for DCIS, have recently endorsed routine sentinal node biopsy (SNB) in these patients. , while other have concluded it be reserved for selected patients. Most agree that SNB should be considered with tissue diagnosis of high risk DCIS (grade III with palpable mass or larger size on imaging) as well as in patients undergoing mastectomy after a core or excisional biopsy diagnosis of DCIS. Experts are not sure whether all women with DCIS would eventually develop invasive breast cancer if they live for a long time and are not treated.

Treatment options for Invasive Ductal Carcinoma
Treatment of IDC usually starts with surgery to remove the main tumor mass and to sample the lymph nodes in the axilla. The stage of the tumor is ascertained after this first surgery. Adjuvant therapy (i.e. treatment after surgery) usually includes chemotherapy, radiotherapy, hormonal therapy (e.g. Tamoxifen) and targeted therapy (e.g. Trastuzumab). More surgery is occasionally needed to complete the removal of the initial tumor or to remove recurrences.

The treatment options offered to an individual patient are determined by the form, stage and location of the cancer, and also by the age, history of prior disease and general health of the patient. Not all patients are treated the same way.