Breast cancer: Postoperative irradiation and management of locally advanced disease

Purpose/Objective: This course will review current indications for postoperative irradiation, present a videotape demonstration of a simulation technique for comprehensive chest wall/nodal irradiation, and discuss multimodality approaches to the difficult problem of locally advanced breast cancer. As part of an expanding role for the radiation oncologist in the treatment of all stages of breast cancer, recent data has inspired a reevaluation of chest wall and nodal irradiation following mastectomy. A decade ago, adjuvant irradiation was considered by many oncologists to be of no survival advantage or perhaps even harmful. Studies leading to this conclusion will be reviewed with special attention to the inadequacies and flawed constructs which biased these studies against adjuvant chest wall/nodal irradiation. The Fischer hypothesis or 'new paradigm' will be challenged. Can improvement in local control result in improved survival? If the goal of treatment is simply to reduce local-regional recurrence, a three-field technique covering the chest wall and supraclavicular nodes may suffice. But if the goal is an improvement in survival based on the treatment of all locoregional sites which may not be sterilized by chemotherapy and mastectomy, a more complex set of fields is required. Based on this premise, we designed a 5-field technique of comprehensive chest wall and nodal irradiation. Simulation of these fields will be demonstrated on videotape. Treatment strategies for both non-inflammatory and inflammatory non-metastatic breast cancer will be presented. Current recommendations include various combinations of chemohormonotherapy, radiation therapy, and mastectomy, but controversies abound regarding the proper sequencing of these modalities, whether breast conservation therapy can be offered to patients who have a dramatic response to systemic therapy, and whether or not any one of these treatment modalities can be dropped under specific clinical scenarios