Background: Increasing number of patients with preexisting breast implants desire breast conservation therapy for breast cancer. There is paucity of comparative data on tumor margins and re-excisions in these patients. High re-excision rates up to 25% have been reported in breast conservation therapy patients; efforts to obtain cosmesis and avoid implant rupture might increase this further. We analyzed tumor margins, re-excision rates, and recurrence in previously augmented versus non-augmented patients undergoing lumpectomy for breast cancer. We preserved preexisting implants if feasible with oncologic clearance and cosmesis.
Methods: Institutional review board-approved retrospective analysis was performed on patients undergoing lumpectomy with history of prior breast augmentation (N = 52) and consecutively selected non-augmented patients (N = 51). Based on tumor distance to inked margin, we grouped margins as negative (≥2 mm), close (<2 mm), and positive. Patients were followed up clinically and with imaging in the outpatient clinic, and recurrences were documented.
Results: Patients in the non-augmented group were significantly more likely to have larger tumors (T2 and above; P = 0.05) compared with the augmented group. Although more patients in the augmented group had positive margins, this was not statistically significant (6 vs 3, P = 0.86). No difference was noted between re-excision rates among the augmented versus non-augmented groups (21.1% vs 19.6%, respectively; odds ratio, 0.91; 95% confidence interval, 0.35-2.37; P = 0.85); these remained unchanged even when adjusting for tumor stage (P = .75) and margins (P = 0.73). Although more patients in the augmented group recurred (4 vs 0), this was not statistically significant (P = 0.1).
Conclusions: Our results indicate that, from the oncological standpoint, patients with prior augmentation can undergo lumpectomy with equivalent tumor margins and re-excision rates. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first reported comparative study between these 2 groups.