Treatment of Primary Breast Cancer

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Abstract
A CONSENSUS Development Conference on "The Treatment of Primary Breast Cancer: Management of Local Disease" was held at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on June 5, 1979. The NIH Consensus Development Program brings together practicing physicians, biomedical research scientists, consumers, and other interested parties in an effort to reach general agreement on the safety and efficacy of a medical technology, whether it be a drug, device, or medical or surgical procedure. Thus, this was an appropriate forum in which to reexamine issues concerned with the treatment of primary breast cancer. Specifically, the purpose of the conference was to address the following question: Are there clinical alternatives to the radical mastectomy that minimize patient morbidity and yet do not decrease a patient's survival potential? Scientific pursuit of this issue, ie, to minimize morbidity without compromising equal probability of survival, reflects one of the major objectives of the Division of Cancer