Breast Cancer: Treatments for early, confined cancer
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 16:28 The following article is from The University of Texas, M. D. Anderson Cancer Center publication, OncoLog, January 2009, Vol. 55, No. 1 :
Choosing Treatment for a Common Group of Early, Confined Breast Cancers
Overview
By definition, ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) is a cancer arising from and pathologically confirmed to be confined to the terminal duct lobular units of the breast. It is therefore considered a noninvasive breast cancer. Each year in the United States, about 64,000 women are diagnosed with DCIS, representing 30% of women diagnosed with breast cancer.
Three decades ago, DCIS was found in patients relatively rarely, typically co-existing with invasive cancers in mastectomy specimens. In the even rarer instance in which a patient presented with clinically evident DCIS—a palpable mass or nipple discharge—she was treated with mastectomy.
Today, it is still unusual for DCIS to present symptomatically;