Unilateral breast reconstruction poses a special set of challenges to the reconstructive breast surgeon compared to bilateral reconstructions. No studies to date provide an objective comparison between autologous and implant based reconstructions in matching the contralateral breast. This study compares the quantitative postoperative results between unilateral implant and autologous flap recons...

Sir—The investigators of the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) (Feb 12, p 528) on breast-conserving surgery with or without radiation for treatment of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) point out that if their finding that there is an increased rate of cancers in the contralateral breast in the surgery plus radiation group was truly radiation induced, it might well...

BACKGROUND Despite increased demand for contralateral prophylactic mastectomy (CPM), the survival benefit of this procedure remains uncertain. METHODS We used the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database to identify 107 106 women with breast cancer who had undergone mastectomy for treatment between 1998 and 2003 and a subset of 8902 women who also underwent CPM during the same per...

BACKGROUND Women treated for breast cancer have an increased risk for developing metachronous contralateral breast cancer (CBC). Patient perception of this risk is often overestimated and has been found to contribute to the decision to undergo contralateral prophylactic mastectomy. An individual's risk is dependent on both patient and tumor characteristics. This review examines and summarizes t...

We present a pilot report of "banking" the contralateral hemi-abdominal deep inferior epigastric perforator (DIEP) flap under the abdominal closure in patients undergoing unilateral autologous breast reconstruction when a hemi-abdominal flap suffices. Four patients undergoing unilateral autologous breast reconstruction with a hemi-abdominal DIEP or superficial inferior epigastric artery flap ha...

CONTEXT Women with BRCA1- or BRCA2-associated breast cancer are at increased risk for contralateral breast cancer and ovarian cancer and therefore may consider secondary cancer prevention strategies, such as prophylactic surgery and tamoxifen therapy. It is not proven to what extent these strategies reduce risk of second cancers in such patients. OBJECTIVE To examine the effect of tamoxifen t...

BACKGROUND The aim of the present study was to introduce a new restricted tangential volumetric modulated arc therapy (tVMAT) technique for whole breast irradiation and compare its dosimetric properties to other currently used breast cancer radiotherapy techniques. METHOD Ten consecutive women with left-sided breast cancer were enrolled in this retrospective study. Four treatment plans were g...

The aim of this study was to evaluate the presence of clinically and mammographically occult disease using breast MRI in a cohort of cancer patients undergoing contralateral prophylactic mastectomy (CPM) and the utmost indication of axillary assessment (sentinel node biopsy (SLNB)) for this side. A retrospective review of patients with unilateral invasive breast cancer or ductal carcinoma in si...