Ten-year results of a randomized clinical trial comparing radical mastectomy and total mastectomy with or without radiation

In 1971 a randomized trial was begun to compare alternative local and regional treatments of breast cancer, all of which employ breast removal. Life-table estimates were obtained for 1665 women enrolled in the study for a mean of 126 months. There were no significant differences among three groups of patients with clinically negative auxillary nodes, with respect to disease-free survival, distant-disease-free survival, or overall survival (about 57%) at 10 years. The patients were treated by radical mastectomy, total (simple) mastectomy without auxillary dissection but with regional irradiation, or total mastectomy without irradiation plus auxillary dissection only if nodes were subsequently positive. Similarly, no differences, were observed between patients with clinically positive nodes treated by radical mastectomy or by total mastectomy without auxillary dissection but with regional irradiation. Survival at 10 years was about 38% in both groups. Our findings indicate that the location of a breast tumor does not influence the prognosis and that irradiation of internal mammary nodes in patients with inner-quadrant lesions does not improve survival. The data also demonstrate that the results obtained at five years accurately predict the outcome at 10 years. It was concluded that the variations of local and regional treatment used in this study are not important in determining survival of patients with breast cancer. 25 references, 6 figures, 1 table