Locally Advanced Breast Cancer and Preoperative Radiotherapy

Over the period 1960–1970, a series of 110 patients suffering from breast carcinoma has been treated by preoperative radiotherapy when it was considered that local recurrence would have occurred after mastectomy. 2. This regime was employed by surgeon-radiotherapist teams in an atmosphere of close cooperation, in an attempt to control the disease on the chest wall, especially when the natural history of the disease tended towards slow progression. 3. Fifteen patients in the series have suffered local recurrence, but five of these are alive, and control of the recurrence has been achieved by surgery, radiotherapy or hormone methods. 4. Thirty-nine patients have died at the time of writing this report; six are alive with evidence of metastatic spread, and the remaining 65 are alive without signs of generalized disease. 5. The rationale behind this sequence of treatments is that whether radiotherapy or surgery is applied, it should be given at a time when the patient's resources of resistance to tumour are in a condition of optimal effectiveness.