Surgery, most common Treatment for Breast Cancer

Surgery is the most common treatment for breast cancer. There are several kinds of surgery.
Your surgeon can describe each kind of surgery, compare the benefits and risks, and help you decide which kind might be best for you:

• Removing part of the breast: Breast-sparing surgery is an operation to remove the cancer and a small amount of the normal tissue that surrounds it. This is also called breast-conserving surgery. It can be a lumpectomy or a segmental mastectomy (also called a partial mastectomy). A woman usually has radiation therapy after breast-sparing surgery to kill cancer cells that may remain in the breast area.
  
  Some women will have more tissue removed but not the whole breast. For these women, the surgeon will remove lymph nodes under the arm and some of the lining over the chest muscles below the tumor.

• Removing the whole breast: Surgery to remove the whole breast (or as much of the breast tissue as possible) is a mastectomy. In some cases, a skin-sparing mastectomy may be an option. For this approach, the surgeon removes as little skin as possible.
  • In total (simple) mastectomy, the surgeon removes the whole breast but not the underarm lymph nodes.
  • In modified radical mastectomy, the surgeon removes the whole breast and most or all of the lymph nodes under the arm. Often, the lining over the chest muscles is removed. A small chest muscle may also be taken out to make it easier to remove the lymph nodes.

The choice between breast-sparing surgery and mastectomy depends on many factors:

• The size, location, and stage of the tumor
• The size of your breast
• Certain features of the cancer
• How you feel about how surgery will change your breast
• How you feel about radiation therapy
• Your ability to travel to a radiation treatment center for daily treatment sessions