Dr. Monica Morrow, chief of the Breast Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York shared her concerns about recent innovations in surgical procedures for breast cancer that allow doctors to minimize post surgical breast deformities may be stressing cosmetic outcomes to the detriment of actual rates of cure.
In an article that appeared on empowereddoctor.com in October, Dr. Morrow said, “We must ensure that surgical approaches designed to improve cosmetic outcomes do not increase local failure and the risk of subsequent death from breast cancer,” said Monica Morrow, “The physician’s primary concerns in planning breast cancer surgery must always be effectiveness and safety. Esthetic considerations, which have become increasingly prominent among surgeons over the past three decades, must remain secondary.”
The article refers to breast cancer techniques of oncoplastic and endoscopic surgery, which involve minimal skin incision, that have become more and more attractive to surgeons and patients alike. However, according to Morrow the results of such procedures are not being adequately evaluated from the point of view of their effectiveness and cure rates versus their more-invasive surgical cousins.
Medicine has achieved considerable advances in breast cancer survival over the past decade, but, Morrow warned, it risks falling back in this area if cosmetics are imprudently emphasized.
“We must ensure that surgical approaches designed to improve cosmetic outcomes do not increase local failure and the risk of subsequent death from breast cancer,” she said.
“The local treatment of breast cancer is based on the results of numerous high-quality clinical trials and is therefore a model for evidence-based care. As we attempt to advance from good to great cosmetic outcomes, it is important that we remember this,” she concluded.
Source: empowereddoctor.com
