FREE NEJM E-TOC    HOME   |   SUBSCRIBE   |   CURRENT ISSUE   |   PAST ISSUES   |   COLLECTIONS   |   Search Term  Advanced Search

Sign in | Get NEJM's E-Mail Table of Contents — Free | Subscribe

Previous Volume 347:2170-2171 December 26, 2002 Number 26 Next

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

	Full Text PDF PDA Full Text Purchase this article Add to Personal Archive Add to Citation Manager Notify a Friend E-mail When Cited Related Article by Fisher, B. PubMed Citation

To the Editor: Fisher et al. (Aug. 22 issue)¹ report that radical mastectomy and total mastectomy are equally effective in terms of survival (equipotent) and interpret the small differences between the groups in their study as insignificant. We believe, however, that the trial in women with a clinically negative axilla was grossly undersized and that equipotency cannot be determined. A meta-analysis of trials addressing treatment of the axilla has shown a 5.4 percent (95 percent confidence interval, 2.7 to 8.0 percent) absolute benefit in survival.²

The authors state that a 5 percent difference is insignificant. The recent National Institutes of . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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.