Dr. DiNome on Surgical Approaches in Patients With Breast Cancer

Maggie DiNome, MD, associate professor of surgery, University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center, discusses the evolution of surgical approaches in patients with breast cancer.

Physicians are understanding that more surgery is not necessarily better surgery. Patients don’t get a better survival outcome by doing a bigger surgery, and they also don’t get a worse survival outcome with a smaller surgery, DiNome says. Most patients are now surviving breast cancer, certainly early-stage breast cancer. Physicians are finding it earlier and treating it better. Systemic therapies are much more effective, so patients are living for long periods of time.

It’s incumbent on surgeons to be focused on quality of life and survivorship issues for patients. Surgeons want to restore a woman’s sense of self-worth, their femininity, and how they feel about themselves. Surgeons want to preserve the breast if it can be preserved, and if it needs to be removed, making it look as natural as possible. That’s the direction that surgery is headed. Surgeons are focusing on the aesthetic outcomes of breast cancer surgery. Surgeons in conjunction with other medical oncologists are working together to get both a good survival outcome as well as good aesthetic outcome, states DiNome.