Paving the way for changing perceptions in breast surgery: a systematic literature review focused on oncological and aesthetic outcomes of oncoplastic surgery for breast cancer

The Modified Frailty Index Predicts Major Complications in Oncoplastic Reduction Mammoplasty

BACKGROUND

An important component of preoperative counseling and patient selection involves surgical risk stratification. There are many tools developed to predict surgical complications. The Modified Frailty Index (mFI) calculates risk based on the following five elements: hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, congestive heart failure, diabetes, and functional status. Recent literature demonstrates the efficacy of the mFI across multiple surgical disciplines. We elected to investigate its utility in oncoplastic reductions (OCR).

METHODS

A retrospective review of all patients with breast cancer who underwent OCR from 1998 to 2020 was queried from a prospectively maintained database. Patient demographics, comorbidities, and surgical details were reviewed. The mFI was computed for each patient. The primary clinical outcome was the development of complications.

RESULTS

547 patients were included in the study cohort. The average age was 55 and the average body mass index was 33.5. The overall complication rate was 19% (n = 105) and the major complication rate was 9% (n = 49). Higher frailty scores were significantly associated with the development of major complications (P < 0.05). mFI scores of 0 had a major complication rate of 5.7%; scores of 1, 13%; and scores of 2, 15.1%. The relative risk of a major complication in patients with elevated mFI (>0) was 2.2. Age, body mass index, and resection weights were not associated with complications (P = 0.15, P = 0.87, and P = 0.30 respectively) on continuous analysis.

CONCLUSIONS

Elevated mFI scores are associated with an increased major complication profile in patients who are undergoing OCR. Hypertension and diabetes are the most common comorbidities in our population, and this tool may assist with preoperative counseling and risk stratification. Benefits of this risk assessment tool include its ease of calculation and brevity. Our study is the first to demonstrate its utility in OCR; however, further study in high-risk patients would strengthen the applicability of this frailty index.

Modern Approaches to Oncoplastic Surgical Treatment

Partial breast reconstruction using oncoplastic techniques is performed at the time of lumpectomy and includes volume replacement techniques such as flaps and volume displacement techniques such as reduction and mastopexy. These techniques are used to preserve breast shape, contour, size, symmetry, inframammary fold position, and position of the nipple-areolar complex. Newer techniques such as auto-augmentation flaps and perforator flaps continue to broaden options and newer radiation therapy protocols will hopefully reduce side effects. Options for the oncoplastic approach now include higher risk patients as there is a larger repository of data on the safety and efficacy of this technique.

Oncoplastic Surgery and the Clinical Features of Breast Cancer—Relevant Factors Associated with Reoperation in Breast Oncoplastic Surgery

Oncoplastic breast surgery slowly becomes a part of routine breast cancer surgical management but evidence with regard to oncological safety remains limited. The aim of this study was to compare relevant factors associated with the particular type of breast carcinoma and the applied surgical techniques either with or without oncoplastic surgery. This retrospective study enrolled the breast cancer female patients who underwent breast-conserving therapy alone or with the oncoplastic surgery in the Department of Surgical Oncology at the Center of Oncology of the Lublin Region St. Jana from Dukli in the years 2008–2011. The study involves 679 breast cancer patients who underwent oncoplasty (n = 81) and the control group (n = 598). There is a significant relationship between the histological type of breast cancer (p = 0.00000) along with the expression of estrogen and/or progesterone receptors (p = 0.01285) and the usage of oncoplastic surgery in breast cancer patients. Interestingly, in the majority of cases, there was no need to conduct a reoperation. Oncoplastic surgery is an effective and safe strategy that might be favorable especially for those patients who are potential candidates for more invasive surgical methods. High-quality evidence to support the oncological safety and benefits of oncoplastic breast surgery is lacking.

Innovative Standards in Oncoplastic Breast Conserving Surgery: From Radical Mastectomy to Extreme Oncoplasty

BACKGROUND

Oncoplastic breast conserving surgery (OBCS), which is the current procedure of choice for eligible BC patients, describes a philosophy that prioritizes oncologic and cosmetic outcomes. However, knowledge gaps regarding training, acceptance, and practice preclude standardization and make it difficult to design algorithmic guidelines to optimize individualized management in the era of precision medicine.

SUMMARY

The harmony between patient expectations and oncologic goals creates the state of the art of OBCS. Nevertheless, to achieve these goals, multidisciplinary approach is a must. Surgical decisions require a comprehensive evaluation including patient factors, tumor biology, genetics, technical considerations, and adjunct therapies. Moreover, the quality-of-life (QOL) issues should be considered as the highest level of priority with a shared decision making instituted on realistic discussions with the patient.

KEY MESSAGES

The standardization in OBCS should be initiated via defining a breast surgeon who should gain theorical and practical competence on techniques via national or international educational programs. The algorithmic patient assessment with appropriate documentation before and after surgery should be established. A simple and safe global lexicon should be designed regarding techniques to be proposed and quality metrics to be considered. Additionally, international multicenter prospective trials should be instituted to overcome knowledge gaps. It is evident that OBCS is the perfect union of science with art. Nevertheless, at the very end, the question is not the nature of the surgeon/artist who would be the extremist, the innovator, or the conservative, but the patient's satisfaction, prognosis, and QOL that conclude the cascade of state of the art of OBCS.

Secondary Surgeries After Oncoplastic Reduction Mammoplasty

PURPOSE

The oncoplastic reduction approach is a popular option for women with breast cancer and macromastia. Although the benefits of this approach are numerous, data on the need for secondary surgeries are limited. We evaluated the need for all secondary surgeries after oncoplastic reduction in an attempt to understand the incidence and indications.

METHODS

All patients with breast cancer who underwent an oncoplastic breast reduction at the time of the tumor resection were queried from a prospectively maintained database from 1998 to 2020 (n = 547) at a single institution. Secondary surgical procedures were defined as any unplanned return to the operating room. Demographic and clinical variables were analyzed, and secondary surgeries were classified and evaluated. The timing and rates of secondary surgery were evaluated and compared with clinical variables.

RESULTS

There were 547 patients included in this series with a mean age of 55 years and body mass index of 33.5. Mean duration of follow-up was 3.8 years. One hundred and seventeen (21%) patients underwent 235 secondary surgeries, with an average of 1.4 operations until stable reconstruction was obtained. The reason for the secondary surgery was involved margins (7.5%), major complications (8.6%), aesthetic improvement (13.3%), and completion mastectomy (5.3%). Age 65 years and younger age was associated with any subsequent procedure (P = 0.023) and revision for cosmesis (P = 0.006). Patients with body mass index greater than 35 had increased secondary surgeries for operative complications (P = 0.026).

CONCLUSIONS

Secondary surgeries after oncoplastic breast reduction procedures are common. Management of margins and complications, such as hematoma and infection, are early indications, with aesthetic improvement, wound healing complications, fat necrosis, and recurrence being late reasons. The most common reason for reoperation is aesthetic improvement, especially in younger patients. Attention to surgical technique and patient selection will help minimize secondary surgeries for the nononcological reasons.

Potential Utility of Adjunct Imaging with Wide-Field Optical Coherence Tomography for Gross and Microscopic Evaluation of Breast Specimens in Real-Time in the Operating Suite

One challenge in the surgical management of breast cancer is maximizing the preservation of healthy tissue while achieving acceptable negative margins. Tools capable of assessing disease-margin involvement intraoperatively and in real-time could provide clinically useful guidance regarding the adequacy of margin resection before the surgery is over. Here we report the intraoperative use of optical coherence tomography (OCT) in 3 patients with DCIS. In all 3 cases, additional lesions identified by OCT during surgery were also noted in histopathology reports 3 to 5 days post-surgery, suggesting that intraoperative use of OCT is a valuable  tool for margin determination in real-time.

Cosmetic Outcomes and Symmetry Comparison in Patients Undergoing Bilateral Therapeutic Mammoplasty for Breast Cancer

Background

Breast-reduction techniques are increasingly used in oncoplastic breast surgery. Bilateral therapeutic mammoplasty has the benefit of decreasing breast volume, enabling resection of larger tumors, and the potential to assure good postoperative symmetry. The aims of this study were to objectively asses the cosmetic outcomes of therapeutic mammoplasty in patients with breast cancer, using the breast cancer conservative treatment cosmetic results (BCCT.core) software, to compare this score with the surgeon’s score and the patient’s assessment, and to evaluate if other defined parameters have an impact on cosmetic outcomes. The secondary aim was to compare breast symmetry pre- and postoperatively.

Materials and Methods

We enrolled 146 consecutive patients with primary breast cancer who underwent therapeutic mammoplasty between 2011 and 2018 in Kristianstad Central Hospital, Sweden. We retrospectively collected data from patients’ records. We analyzed the BCCT.core score using postoperative photographs to objectively evaluate cosmetic outcomes on a four-grade scale and compared with preoperative photographs to evaluate symmetry. Cosmetic outcomes were also assessed subjectively by patients and surgeons, using a 10-point Likert scale.

Results

The majority of patients (89%) had good or excellent BCCT.core scores, which correlated with surgeons’ scores, rs =  − 0.22 (p < 0.001). Overall, patients were more satisfied with the cosmetic outcomes than the surgeons (p < 0.001). Evidence supporting an association between the defined clinicopathological variables, for example, tumor size, and cosmetic outcomes, was weak.

Conclusion

Therapeutic mammoplasty yields a very good cosmetic outcome, evaluated both by subjective and objective measurements. Importantly, symmetry can be improved in patients with asymmetry.

Supplementary information

The online version contains supplementary material available at (10.1007/s00268-020-05941-0).

Clinical Significance of Oncoplastic Breast-Conserving Surgery and Application of Volume-Displacement Technique

ABSTRACT

Oncoplastic breast-conserving surgery for breast cancer has been continuously developing in recent years, and it has become an important part of breast cancer surgery. Its safety and aesthetics have been widely recognized by domestic and foreign experts. However, due to the complexity and diversity of individuals and diseases, and the need for integrating the thinking of breast surgery and plastic surgery, it is still a challenge for breast surgeons. This review summarizes the pros and cons of its clinical application through a comprehensive discussion of hot issues in oncoplastic breast-conserving surgery and introduces common volume-displacement techniques in the clinic for reference by doctors in daily work.

Surgery after neoadjuvant immunotherapy in patients with resectable non-small cell lung cancer

Surgery is the standard of care for patients with operable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). However, as a single modality, surgery for early stage or locally advanced NSCLC remains associated with high rates of local and distant recurrence. The addition of neoadjuvant or adjuvant chemotherapy has modestly improved outcomes. While systemic therapy paired with surgery for other malignancies such as breast cancer have resulted in far better outcomes for equivalent stage designations, outcome improvements for operable NSCLC have lagged in part as a result of trials where adjuvant chemotherapy seemed to incur harm for stage IA patients and only modest survival benefit for stage IB-IIIA patients (AJCC 7th ed.). In recent years, immunotherapy for NSCLC has emerged as a systemic therapy with significant benefit over traditional chemotherapy regimens. These advances with immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have opened the door to administering peri-operative immunotherapy for operable NSCLC. As a result, a great multitude of studies investigating the use of immunotherapy in combination with surgery for NSCLC as well as several other malignancies have emerged. In this review, we outline the rationale for neoadjuvant immunotherapy in the treatment of operable NSCLC and summarize the available evidence that include preoperative ICI as a single modality or in combination with systemic agents and/or radiotherapy. Further, we summarize how such treatment trajectories open multiple unique windows of opportunity for scientific discovery and potential therapeutic gains for these vulnerable patients.

How to Optimize Aesthetics for the Partial Mastectomy Patient

Aesthetic concern is one of the main driving forces behind the popularity of the oncoplastic approach to breast conservation therapy. Oncoplastic options at the time of lumpectomy include volume replacement techniques such as flaps and volume displacement techniques such as the oncoplastic reduction. These techniques can be employed to ensure preservation of breast shape and contour, size and symmetry, inframammary fold position, and position of the nipple-areola complex. The importance of aesthetic outcomes is not only to improve overall patient satisfaction but also to minimize the need for revisional surgeries for shape and symmetry. The purpose of this review is to discuss ways to optimize the aesthetic result and to review the evidence behind aesthetic outcomes.

The Diagnostic Performance of Minimally Invasive Biopsy in Predicting Breast Pathological Complete Response After Neoadjuvant Systemic Therapy in Breast Cancer: A Meta-Analysis

Background: Neoadjuvant systemic therapy (NST) is commonly used in patients with early stage breast cancer before definitive surgery. The standard diagnostic approach for pathologic complete response (pCR) of the breast is breast surgery and pathologic examination. In recent years, several trials investigated the predictive value of image-guided minimally invasive biopsy (MIB) for breast pCR after NST. This study conducted a meta-analysis to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of MIB.

Materials and Methods: We identified relevant research reports in online databases through February 2020. The Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies 2 (QUADAS-2) tool was used to evaluate the quality of included trials. We extracted relevant data and constructed a 2 × 2 contingency table to analyze the predictive accuracy of MIB for breast pCR. Subgroup analyses and meta-regressions were also performed to investigate potential causes of heterogeneity.

Results: Nine trials (with 1,030 breast cancer patients) were included in this meta-analysis. The pooled sensitivity and specificity of MIB were 0.72 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.61–0.81] and 0.99 (95% CI: 0.89–1.00), respectively. By combining relevant data, there were no significant differences in sensitivity or specificity among different molecular subtypes of breast cancer (P > 0.05). Subgroup analyses and meta-regressions implied that trials with responses not limited to clinical complete response (cCR) had a significantly higher accuracy of MIB than those with only cCR (RDOR: 7.65; 95% CI: 1.05–55.46; P = 0.046).

Conclusion: Current image-guided MIB methods are not accurate enough in terms of predicting breast pCR after NST. It is of utmost clinical importance to standardize the MIB procedure and incorporate other factors into the evaluation in order to improve the accuracy to an acceptable level.