As most solid tumors, surgery is often the first step of the multidisciplinary management for breast cancers. Although mastectomy and axillar lymphadenectomy still have indications, conservative treatment and sentinel node detection are commonly used. Thanks to induction chemotherapy and oncoplastic techniques, surgery is conservative in most cases, even for important tumors without overall survival prejudice. There is no consensus about resection margins status but a limit of 2 to 3 mm seems to be reasonable while oncoplastic surgery allows large resection and good cosmetic outcomes. In this overview, we present the state of the art for breast cancer surgery including conservative and radical treatments, axillar lymphadenectomy and sentinel lymph node detection, margins status, oncoplastic techniques.
Copyright © 2010. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS.