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| Breast-conserving Therapy |
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Despite the demonstrated efficacy of breast-conserving therapy and the obvious trend towards less invasive breast-conserving surgery, many women are still treated by mastectomy for a variety of reasons, including time commitment and inconvenience for daily travel to receive a daily dose of radiation. Consequently, the treatment of early stage breast cancer is evolving from the traditional breast-conserving technique, employing a standard 6-7 weeks of whole breast irradiation, to techniques in which localized irradiation is used in an accelerated fractionation protocol.
In intraoperative radiotherapy with INTRABEAM from Carl Zeiss the treatment is performed during surgery after removal of the tumor, and the affected tissue in the tumor bed is exposed to the radiation from the inside. The Targeted Intraoperative Radiation Therapy (TARGIT) shows an improvement in the treatment outcome and can additionally shorten the treatment course. | |
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