Preoperative Irradiation in Management of Locally Advanced Breast Cancer

Abstract

Introduction GENERAL acceptance by clinicians of the basic rationale for the use of preoperative irradiation in mammary carcinoma has been slow and grudging and indeed it is only in very recent years that any degree of widespread interest has been demonstrated in combination therapy of this type. At the present time radiotherapists and surgeons in several centers are studying its value in a wide variety of malignant diseases. However, in more than a decade since a previous report from the Toronto General Hospital and the Ontario Cancer Institute¹ there has been no real evidence of gathering momentum in the frequency or the enthusiasm with which preoperative irradiation has been utilized in the management of breast cancer, despite the fact that newer techniques in radiotherapy have provided the surgeon with the re-assurance of skin-sparing irradiation. Nonetheless there has been no effective argument against the validity of the theses on which