Surgery

While two large studies suggest that intraoperative radiation therapy offers about the same overall survival and rates as whole-breast external beam radiation therapy for certain women diagnosed with early stage-breast cancer, there are concerns about local recurrence rates.

A research letter estimates that modern radiation therapy techniques are less likely to cause heart problems than radiation therapy techniques used 20 or more years ago.

People newly diagnosed with non-metastatic breast cancer who switched their care to a different doctor had various treatments delayed by more than a week.

A study suggests Black women are about 3.5 times more likely to develop lymphedema than white women.

A study suggests that silicone breast implants are associated with a higher risk of certain autoimmune disorders, as well as stillbirth and melanoma, but the FDA disagrees with the results.

Another study suggests that lumpectomy plus radiation may offer survival benefits for some women diagnosed with early-stage disease.

The American Cancer Society and the American Society of Clinical Oncology have developed new guidelines on breast cancer survivorship care.

A study suggests lifestyle changes aimed at getting to and maintaining a healthy weight as well as promoting the flow of lymph fluid can help reduce lymphedema risk in women who've been treated for breast cancer.

A study has found that women diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer who are treated with chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation have better survival rates than women who don't receive all three treatments.

Women who have lipofilling after reconstruction are no more likely to have a recurrence or be diagnosed with a new cancer than women who never had lipofilling.

Early results suggest that treating just the area around where a cancer used to be with radiation may be as good as treating the whole breast with radiation.

Women diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer in one breast who are treated with lumpectomy followed by radiation therapy have the same survival rates as women who are treated with double mastectomy.

A study found that many women diagnosed with breast cancer that has spread to four or more lymph nodes don't get radiation therapy after mastectomy, even though oncology guidelines recommend it.

A small study has found that most younger women diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer who decide to have the other healthy breast removed choose the surgery because they want to reduce their risk of breast cancer developing in the other breast and improve their survival, even though most of them know that removing the other healthy breast doesn't really improve survival rates in women without an abnormal breast cancer gene.

Removing the ovaries and taking tamoxifen after breast cancer surgery had benefits for premenopausal women shows a new study done in Vietnam and China.

While most women having breast cancer surgery won't develop an infection, research shows that infections after breast surgery happen more often than expected.

Surgeons' characteristics seem to affect whether women receive radiation therapy after lumpectomy.

Many women overestimate the risk of DCIS coming back.

Whether or not a woman has sentinal lymph node biopsy seems to be largely influenced by her age, ethnicity, and insurance status, and not by the relevant disease factors, new research shows.

Women whose breasts look significantly different from each other after lumpectomy are more likely to be depressed and feel ashamed of their bodies.

Research suggests that many women diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer don't understand the differences in risks and benefits between mastectomy and lumpectomy and radiation therapy.

Most women who have breast cancer surgery have some type of arm problem, even more than a year after surgery.

Women who had lumpectomy to treat an initial breast cancer and then had lumpectomy again to treat breast cancer that came back in the same breast had lower survival rates in the 10 years after the second surgery compared to women who had lumpectomy as the first surgery and then mastectomy as the second surgery.

A small study suggests that reconstruction done immediately after mastectomy using tissue from the body offers better results after radiation compared to immediate reconstruction using implants.