Rational Local Therapy for Breast Cancer

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Abstract
In a 1976 lecture to the Society of Surgical Oncology, the late Jerome Urban lamented the loss of a rational approach to the treatment of breast cancer, which he thought had been replaced “by an emotional appeal to the patient's vanity. A great cry has been raised in the public media to save the breast, despite the long-term consequences.”1 In this issue of the Journal, Fisher and colleagues2 and Veronesi and colleagues3 describe the long-term outcomes of two pivotal randomized trials comparing breast-conserving surgery and mastectomy. These studies document how far our understanding of breast cancer has evolved since Urban's . . .