Report casts doubt on breast-cancer treatment

Press, 8 May 1978, Page 9

Report casts doubt on breast-cancer treatment

NZPA-Reuter Chicago Radical mastectomy, the most extensive and disfiguring surgery for breast cancer, is no more effective in ensuring patient survival than simpler operations and should be abandoned, according to a report ■blished in Chicago.

In the largest study of its kind, survival rates were not found to be significantly different among some 1650 women who had either radical, modified radical, or

simple mastectomy surgery. Radical mastectomy involves removal of the cancerous breast, underlying muscles and lymph nodes in the armpit. Modified radical leaves the muscles intact, and simple mastectomy removes only the breast.

The study, published in the current issue the “Archives of Surgery,” surveyed all women operated on in the Rockford, Illinois, area between 1924 and 1972 whose condition could he

followed for at least five years after surgery. Most of the patient were followed for 10 years or until death.

Dr Alfred Meyer, of the Rockford School of Medicine, one of the authors of the report, told NZPA-Reu-ter that the abandonment of radical mastectomy, the most commonly performed operation, would enable women with breast cancer to achieve the same results with a less serious operation and less deformity.