The New England Journal of Medicine
e-mail icon  FREE NEJM E-TOC    HOME   |   SUBSCRIBE   |   CURRENT ISSUE   |   PAST ISSUES   |   COLLECTIONS   |    Advanced Search
Sign in | Get NEJM's E-Mail Table of Contents — Free | Subscribe
 
Original Article
Volume 328:1581-1586 June 3, 1993 Number 22
NextNext

Lumpectomy Compared with Lumpectomy and Radiation Therapy for the Treatment of Intraductal Breast Cancer
Bernard Fisher, Joseph Costantino, Carol Redmond, Edwin Fisher, Richard Margolese, Nikolay Dimitrov, Norman Wolmark, D. Lawrence Wickerham, Melvin Deutsch, Liora Ore, Eleftherios Mamounas, William Poller, and Maureen Kavanah

 Sign up for free e-toc
 

This Article
-Full Text

Commentary
-Letters
-Letters

Tools and Services
-Add to Personal Archive
-Add to Citation Manager
-Notify a Friend
-E-mail When Cited

More Information
-PubMed Citation
ABSTRACT

Background and Methods Women with ductal carcinoma in situ have been treated both by lumpectomy and by lumpectomy followed by radiation therapy, but the benefit of combined therapy is uncertain. A group of 818 women with ductal carcinoma in situ were randomly assigned to undergo lumpectomy or lumpectomy followed by breast irradiation (50 Gy). Sufficient tissue was removed that the margins of the resected specimens were histologically tumor-free. The mean duration of follow-up was 43 months (range, 11 to 86). The principal end point of the study was event-free survival, as defined by the presence of no new ipsilateral or contralateral breast cancers, regional or distant metastases, or other cancers and by no deaths from causes other than cancer.

Results Five-year event-free survival was better in the women who received breast irradiation (84.4 percent, vs. 73.8 percent for the women treated by lumpectomy alone; P = 0.001). The improvement was due to a reduction in the occurrence of second ipsilateral breast cancers; the incidence of each of the other events was similar in the two groups. Of 391 women treated by lumpectomy alone, ipsilateral breast cancer developed in 64 (16.4 percent); it was noninvasive in 32 and invasive in the remaining 32. Of 399 women treated with lumpectomy and breast irradiation, ipsilateral breast cancer developed in 28 (7.0 percent) (noninvasive in 20 and invasive in 8). The five-year cumulative incidence of second cancers in the ipsilateral breast was reduced by irradiation from 10.4 percent to 7.5 percent for noninvasive cancers and from 10.5 percent to 2.9 percent for invasive cancers (P = 0.055 and P<0.001, respectively).

Conclusions Breast irradiation after lumpectomy is more appropriate than lumpectomy alone for women with localized ductal carcinoma in situ. .


Source Information

Institutions contributing 10 or more patients to the study are listed in the Appendix, together with the names of the principal investigators.

From the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project Headquarters, Rm. 914, Scaife Hall, 3550 Terrace St., Pittsburgh, PA 15261, where reprint requests should be addressed to Dr. Fisher.

Full Text of this Article


Related Letters:

Radiation Therapy for in Situ or Localized Breast Cancer
Verhoeven D., Van Marck E., van Oosterom A.T., Lagios M. D., Page D. L., Sinoff C. L., Fisher B., Redmond C. K., Fisher E., Veronesi U.
Extract | Full Text  
N Engl J Med 1993; 329:1577-1579, Nov 18, 1993. Correspondence

The NSABP Trials
Levenback C., Bross I. D., Davis N., Heitjan D. F., Altman L. K., Angell M., Kassirer J. P.
Extract | Full Text  
N Engl J Med 1994; 331:809-810, Sep 22, 1994. Correspondence

This article has been cited by other articles:



HOME  |  SUBSCRIBE  |  SEARCH  |  CURRENT ISSUE  |  PAST ISSUES  |  COLLECTIONS  |  PRIVACY  |  TERMS OF USE  |  HELP  |  beta.nejm.org

Comments and questions? Please contact us.

The New England Journal of Medicine is owned, published, and copyrighted © 2009 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved.