Do you consider treatment of the supraclavicular region mandatory for breast cancer patients with a chest wall recurrence?
If the patient has negative axillary nodes and no other signs of high risk disease other then a local chest wall failure, do I still need to treat the supraclav?
Answer from: Radiation Oncologist at Academic Institution
In our practice at MD Anderson, we routinely treat the chest wall and undissected nodal basins in patients with chest wall recurrences who have not had prior radiation. As most of these patients have undergone prior axillary surgery, it is plausible that they will have aberrant lymphatic drainage. T...
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Radiation Oncologist at Duke University Medical Center Agree totally with Dr Smith
Answer from: Radiation Oncologist at Community Practice
The question of treatment to regional nodes in isolated chest wall recurrences for breast cancer patients is a good one. At least two older retrospective series come to mind, both supporting the role for chestwall + regional nodal RT (Toonkel et al., The significance of local recurrence of carcino...
Agree totally with Dr Smith