Conservative excision and radiotherapy for early breast cancer--an acceptable alternative?

The Westminster Hospital treatment policy for operable breast cancer is presented in this paper and particular attention is paid to its technical aspects. The techniques of tumour lumpectomy, radical external beam irradiation and local boosting therapy with iridium implantation are described in detail. Our initial results with this approach are encouraging and will shortly be reported. In view of this and the obvious advantages of breast conservation we hope that techniques similar to this will be adopted by others working in this field.