Breast cancer ; Breast-conserving treatment ; Radiotherapy
Abstract
Purpose: To determine the patterns of evaluation and treatment in the patient with early breast cancer treated
with conservative surgery and radiotherapy and to improve the radiotherapy techiniques, nationwide survey was
performed.
Materials and Methods: A web-based database system for Korean Patterns of Care Study (PCS) for 6
common cancers was developed. Two hundreds sixty-one randomly selected records of eligible patients treated
between 1998∼1999 from 15 hospitals were reviewed.
Results: The patients ages ranged from 24 to 85 years(median 45 years). Infiltrating ductal carcinoma was
most common histologic type (88.9%) followed by medullary carcinoma (4.2%) and infiltrating lobular carcinoma
(1.5%). Pathologic T stage by AJCC was T1 in 59.7% of the casses, T2 in 29.5% of the cases, Tis in 8.8%
of the cases. Axillary lymph node dissection was performed in 91.2% of the cases and 69.7% were node
negative. AJCC stage was 0 in 8.8% of the cases, stage I in 44.9% of the cases, stage IIa in 33.3% of the
cases, and stage IIb in 8.4% of the cases. Estrogen and progesteron receptors were evaluated in 71.6%, and
70.9% of the patients, respectively. Surgical methods of breast-conserving surgery was excision/lumpectomy in
37.2%, wide excision in 11.5%, quadrantectomy in 23% and partial mastectomy in 27.5% of the cases. A
pathologically confirmed negative margin was obtained in 90.8% of the cases. Pathological margin was involved
with tumor in 10 patients and margin was close (less than 2 mm) in 10 patients. All the patients except one
recieved more than 90% of the planned radiotherapy dose. Radiotherapy volume was breast only in 88% of the
cases, breast+supraclavicular fossa (SCL) in 5% of the cases, and breast+SCL+posterior axillary boost in
4.2% of the cases. Only one patient received isolated internal mammary lymph node irradiation. Used radiation
beam was Co-60 in 8 cases, 4 MV X-ray in 115 cases, 6 MV X-ray in 125 cases, and 10 MV X-ray in 11
cases. The radiation dose to the whole breast was 45∼59.4 Gy (median 50.4) and boost dose was 8∼20 Gy
(median 10 Gy). The total radiation dose delivered was 50.4∼70.4 Gy (median 60.4 Gy).
Conclusion: There was no major deviation from current standard in the patterns of evaluation and treatment
for the patients with early breast cancer treated with breast conservation method. Some varieties were identified
in boost irradiation dose. Separate analysis for the datails of radiotherapy planning will be followed and the
outcome of treatment is needed to evaluate the process.