The effect of surgical technique on local recurrence rates following mastectomy.

The effects of two different axillary techniques, i.e. sampling and dissection, in combination with mastectomy for operable carcinoma are compared. The dissection technique when combined with radiotherapy gives better local disease control than sampling. This also confirms the proposition that an axillary sampling technique is an inefficient method of staging breast cancer and its use will result in inferior local disease control.