Word: breast
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...years many women got an ugly scar along with their answer because most biopsies began with a wide surgical incision. Nowadays, more breast centers offer such minimally invasive biopsies as the Mammotome, which relies on careful positioning of the breast to remove the least amount of tissue. "We're trying to reserve surgery for treatment, not diagnosis," says Dr. Joshua Gross, chief of breast imaging at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. "So many women I see have scars all over their breasts. The scars aren't from being treated. They're from doctors finding...
Thirty years ago, surgery meant mastectomy--removal of the entire breast. By the 1980s, studies had shown that for tumors that had not spread, only the portion immediately surrounding the cancerous growth needed to be cut away--provided the operation was followed by radiation therapy to destroy any wayward cancer cells the surgeon may have missed. Today, as more women are being treated for ever smaller tumors, doctors are finding that even these so-called lumpectomies can be further refined...
...minimalist approach begins with the first cut, which many surgeons now place near the nipple, under the arm or in the lower portion of the breast so that any scars are much less obvious. Because many small tumors are confined to the duct or its immediate vicinity, doctors have learned they don't need to remove so much of the overlying fatty tissue as they used to. "Taking out too much fat was what led to the concavities and deformities we saw in the past," says Dr. Alexander Swistel, director of the Weill Cornell Breast Center in New York City...
...York City are experimenting with high-frequency radio waves that can literally cook tumors from the inside. Using ultrasound to guide them, doctors insert a multipronged probe into a tumor. The prongs open up like the spokes of an umbrella and melt malignant cells without burning surrounding breast tissue. So far, the procedure has been performed only on women who were planning to get a mastectomy or lumpectomy anyway. But early results have been encouraging enough that physicians hope to test it as a stand-alone procedure this spring...
...drawbacks to minimally invasive surgery, in the eyes of many women, is that it is usually followed by radiation. Currently, doctors shoot high-powered beams across the affected breast five days a week for six or seven weeks. But it has become increasingly clear, particularly with smaller tumors, that if the cancer recurs, it usually does so in the original spot from which the tumor had been removed. By focusing radiation more precisely on the place where the original tumor occurred, says Dr. Silvia Formenti, chairwoman of radiation oncology at New York University School of Medicine, "we think...