Purpose: To evaluate feasibility, quality of life, toxicity, and cosmetic outcome for intraoperative breast cancer brachytherapy after breast-conserving surgery using high dose rate brachytherapy.
Methods: Fifty-two consecutive women, ⩾50 years old, diagnosed with a unifocal non-lobular breast cancer ⩽3 cm, N0, underwent breast-conserving surgery and sentinel node biopsy. Twenty-five women received intraoperative brachytherapy pre-pathology at primary surgery and the others post-pathology, during a second procedure. An applicator, connected to a high dose rate afterloader, was used. Two of the women were excluded due to metastases found per-operatively at a frozen section from the sentinel node. Quality of life was evaluated using two validated health questionnaires. Treatment toxicity was documented according to the LENT-SOMA scale by two oncologists. The cosmetic result was evaluated using the validated freely available software BCCT.core 2.0.
Results: The clinical procedure worked out well logistically. Seven women received supplementary external radiotherapy due to insufficient margins and, in one case, poor adaptation of the breast parenchyma to the applicator. No serious adverse effects from irradiation were registered. The results from the health questionnaires showed no major differences compared with reference groups from the Swedish population. Only two women were registered as having a "poor" cosmetic result while a majority of the women had a "good" outcome.
Conclusions: This pilot study shows that intraoperative brachytherapy is a feasible procedure and encourages further trials evaluating its role in treatment of early breast cancer.
Keywords: Intraoperative brachytherapy; breast-conserving surgery; endocrine therapy; local recurrence; partial-breast radiation.