Breast Cancer Study Doubts Value of 'Disfiguring' Surgery

A School of Public Health (SPH) study shows that radical breast surgery is "no more effective than more conservative less mutilating treatment," Maurice S. Fox, professor of Biology at MIT and author of the study, said this week.

In his evaluation of American, British and Danish follow-up surveys of thousands of women ten to 20 years after they had breast surgery, Fox found that the survival rate of women who had simple mastectomies--removal of the breast--was the same as the survival rate of women who had radical mastectomies--removal of the chest muscle, lymph nodes under the arm and the breast.

Time Off

Fox's study, which he conducted while on sabbatical from MIT at the SPH, will be published in today's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

I. Craig Henderson, assistant professor of Medicine at the Medical School and oncologist at the Farber Cancer Institute, said this week there are 90,000 reported cases of breast cancer each year. Henderson said most breast cancer patients undergo simple mastectomies or modified radical mastectomies, but thousands of women still have the "old-fashioned, disfiguring" radical mastectomy.

Henderson said that after radical surgery, there is less chance of cancer reappearing on the patient's chest wall than after simple, less-disfiguring surgery, but radical surgery does not improve the survival rate because cancer has usually spread to other organs before it is detected in the breast.

Henderson added there has been a marked change in recent years towards less disfiguring surgery. He said National Institute of Health figures indicate the number of women having radical mastectomies was halved between 1970 and 1976 while the number having modified radical surgery (which does not involve removal of the chest muscle or total dissection of the lymph nodes) more than tripled.