Background: Lumpectomy followed by radiation therapy (RT) has become an accepted local management strategy for patients with small, mammographically detected ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) of the breast. The aim of this analysis is to describe control rates and patterns of relapse in a cohort of Israeli women with mammographically detected DCIS treated at a single medical center.
Patients and methods: The files of 107 consecutive patients with DCIS were retrieved from the cancer registry of the unit of RT. All women underwent lumpectomy followed by definitive RT, administered in conventional dose fractionation regimens. Oral tamoxifen, 20 mg/ day, was prescribed to all but 2 patients with positive receptors.
Results: Within a median follow-up time of 52 months, no local recurrence of any breast tumor was found. There was no correlation between event-free survival and tumor size, focality, grading, hormone receptor status, administration of adjuvant hormonal therapy, timing of RT, and RT boost delivery. The 8-year overall survival, disease-free-survival, and event-free survival were 100, 100, and 87%, respectively.
Conclusions: The results reported herein are consistent with short-term and intermediate-term outcomes that are better than the reported benchmarks from prospective randomized trials. Although this could reflect selection factors at a single institution, it is also plausible that a genetically distinct disease is present in this local population.