In the setting of increased awareness regarding the need to address potential overtreatment in the management of breast cancer patients with favorable-prognosis disease, this article reviews three relevant instances in which the extent of surgery has been safely decreased: margin width in patients with ductal carcinoma in situ; axillary management in clinically node-negative women undergoing primary breast-conserving surgery; and the use of neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by sentinel node biopsy for patients presenting with node-positive breast cancer. The management of the axillary nodes over the past decade highlights the potential to de-escalate surgery in the era of multimodality therapy. Similar opportunities exist for the use of radiotherapy. To fully realize the potential of de-escalating surgery, new communication strategies must be developed to convince patients that bigger is not necessarily better.
Keywords: Axillary lymph node dissection; Breast cancer; DCIS; Margins; Neoadjuvant chemotherapy; Overtreatment; Re-excision.
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