Conservative surgery

Biopsy of suspicious breast tissue involves tissue excision restricted to removal of the suspicious lesion including only 1 cm of the surrounding normal tissue. It is most often a diagnostic or therapeutic surgical procedure.

Quadrantectomy is the most common type of surgery for breast cancer. The surgeon removes only a portion of the breast involved with tumor cells along with a portion of the surrounding normal tissue. The complete material, i.e. ‘preparation’ is then examined by the pathologist to determine whether the tissue margins contain cancer cells or not.

Tissue margins should be negative or cancer-free, and this will be the best indicator of complete tumor removal. Measurements of the distance between the tumor and resection margin are also done in all six directions (up, down, forward, backward, left, right) to help decide on further treatment options, or whether to perform re-excision before irradiation or mastectomy.

If the pathology results show any tumor cells in the margins, the physician will indicate further procedures (re-excision) to remove remaining tumor cells from the breast. Thereupon, the majority of women will be candidates for radiation therapy to completely remove residual tumor cells from the breast, if any.