During lumpectomy, your surgeon aims to take out all the breast cancer, plus a rim of normal tissue around it. The tumor and surrounding tissue is rolled in a special ink so that the outer edges, or margin, are clearly visible under a microscope. A pathologist looks at it to see if there are cancer cells in the margin. There has been some question about how wide a clear margin should be. Some doctors want 2 mm or larger margins and others think a clear margin can be smaller than 1 mm. Because of the controversy, about 25% of women who have lumpectomy have a re-excision to remove a larger margin of cancer-free tissue. To establish a standard, two oncology groups wrote new guidelines saying that clear margins, no matter how small as long as there is no ink on the cancer tumor, should be the standard for lumpectomy surgery. If you had lumpectomy, did your surgeon talk to you about margins? bit.ly/PjWqjh
Posted on: Tue, 15 Apr 2014 19:30:01 +0000
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