[Conservative surgery after radiotherapy with preoperative doses in the treatment of breast cancer]. / Chirurgie conservatrice après radiothérapie à doses pré-opératoires dans le traitement des cancers du sein.

Radiotherapy as primary treatment is one of the means of increasing the rate of conservative treatment in patients with a breast tumour more than 3 cm in diameter. Between 1980 and 1986, 232 patients were treated in the Curie Institute by irradiation followed by conservative surgery for T2NO or T2N1a tumours wider than 3 cm, which accounted for 66 percent of the cases; 126 of these 232 tumours were located in the upper and outer quadrant. Axillary dissection was combined with tumoral excision in 63 percent of the cases. Conservative surgery was performed in patients who, after preoperative irradiation (50 Gy), had a persistent tumour less than 3 cm in diameter. Tumorectomy was complete in 96 percent of the cases, and the operative specimen was sterilized in 20 percent. The mean follow-up period was 46 months. The overall survival rate was 83 percent at 5 years (91 percent for T2NON1a). No local recurrence was observed in 92 percent of the patients at 3 years and 87 percent at 5 years. Nine percent of these women developed lymphoedema of the upper limb. The cosmetic result was good in 70 percent of the cases, fair in 25 percent and poor in 5 percent. The survival rate being the same with this treatment as with mastectomy, and the local recurrence rate being relatively low (13 percent at 5 years), we feel authorized to suggest that this post-radiotherapy conservative surgery should be used, at least in women with T2NON1a breast cancer.