Neoadjuvant chemotherapy or hormonal therapy is based on biological data and enables more patients to be treated with breast conserving surgery for locally advanced T2 and T3 without significantly increasing the rates of ipsilateral breast recurrence. Careful consideration of an optimal preoperative planning aims at accurately determining the patterns of primary tumour down staging and at the amount and location of any residual tumour in the breast, besides converting patients from mutilating surgery candidates to candidates for breast conservative procedure. The use of induction chemotherapy has the potential to improve the cosmetic results but free margins must be achieved and surgery must be planned in onco-plastic surgery. Axillary lymph node clearance is still the gold standard surgery in the treatment of the axilla. Sentinel lymph node biopsy can be done for clinically N0 patients but only in control trials.
Keywords: Neoadjuvant systemic therapy, breast cancer surgery.