Local recurrence after breast conserving therapy

One hundred fifteen patients with primary breast cancer were treated with breast conserving surgery between December, 1987 to January, 1996. Nine of 115 (7.8%) patients had local recurrences and 4 of 115 (3.5%) patients had distant metastases. The locations of local recurrences were the ipsilateral axilla (1), skin (2), and the ipsilateral mammary gland (6). When we looked at the causes of the local recurrences, there were three recurrences in the mammary gland independent of the first breast cancer, one technological failure in the axilla lymph-node dissection, two false negative margins, two implantations, and one caused by lymphatic vessel involvement. Our data suggest that it is very important to assess the surgical margins, but it was difficult to evaluate them to predict some kind of local recurrence.