Breast cancer—Preoperative and postoperative radiation therapy

Our goal is to develop new methods of breast cancer treatment that produce results better than those usually obtained in patients with operable breast cancer who have a radical mastectomy and patients with inoperable breast cancer who receive desultory and inadequate radiation therapy. We must examine our views “operable patients are curable” and “inoperable patients are incurable” in light of our actual results and recent changes in understanding of the mechanisms of failure to cure breast cancer by surgical treatment and the processes by which radiation therapy cures breast cancer. We must search out ways to increase the cure rate in both operable and inoperable breast cancer patients. Combinations of radiation therapy and surgical resection have been tried with varying successes However, since it is apparent that aggressive radiation therapy cures a significant proportion of patients with inoperable breast cancer,8, 9, 11, 15, 22 it seems reasonable to re-evaluate this combination therapy and reassess the benefits and failures of such combinations.