Summary version of the standards, options and recommendations for nonmetastatic breast cancer (updated January 2001)

A French national survey on infiltrating breast cancer: analysis of clinico-pathological features and treatment modalities in 1159 patients

“…Our study confirms that AD continues to be considered as a standard in breast cancer surgery in France [38]. Our overall ALNI rate was 44.4%, similar to that seen in other studies [10,12,15,[44][45][46][47][48], which underlines the persistent crucial role played by axillary lymph-node surgery.…”

“…The radiotherapy fields we observed following radical surgery were in agreement with French Breast Cancer Guidelines, which recommend radiotherapy in case of ALNI and/or central or inner tumours [37,38,58]. However, the optimal indications for locoregional postmastectomy radiotherapy are under debate.…”

“…A series of randomised trials with an average follow-up of 8 years have confirmed a significant reduction in LR rates from 20-30% to 6-11% with the addition of radiotherapy [38,62,63]. In our study, 2% of women did not receive radiotherapy following BCS, a rate slightly higher than in previous French studies [4,7,8].…”

“…In France, BCS is widely used in the treatment of stage I-II tumours [37,38]. The rate of BCS in our study was high (77%), and only slightly influenced by age.…”

“…Use of SLNB has tended to increase with the development of mammographic screening, leading to smaller tumours being detected [56], and following the recent findings of a large randomised trial [57]. In France, postoperative radiotherapy is widely used (both after BCS and mastectomy) [37,38,58]. Metaanalyses of radiotherapy trials have confirmed a 68-75% reduction of locoregional recurrence (LR) and an absolute increase in survival rate of 4.8-12.3% [59][60][61].…”