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Breast implants are widely used in reconstruction after breast cancer. Infection after implant reconstruction is a major complication, with rates ranging from 5 to 30%. This rate is less for pure cosmetic augmentation. Historically, infection of an implant mandated implant removal for sepsis control. An alternative is to attempt to salvage the infected implant. This path can be a long one, requiring surgery for washouts and prolonged antibiotic therapy. This article documents our experience of infected implant salvage over the last 13 years. We conducted a retrospective analysis of all patients who developed a breast implant infection between January 2005 and January 2018. All patients had both clinical signs of infection and a positive bacteriological sample. Patients were divided into two groups: upfront medical therapy (including those requiring secondary surgical salvage) and primary surgery. The salvage procedure was defined as successful when the implant was still in place three months after the initial reconstruction. Eighty patients were included: 77 in the medical group and 3 in the surgical group. Overall, implant salvage was achieved in 88.8% of women (n=71). Of these, 73.8% (n=59) underwent medical treatment alone and 15% (n=12) underwent medical treatment followed by surgical management. The main causative organism was staphylococcus in 81.2%. When the infection was caused by a coagulase-negative staphylococcus, the rate of success was 98% (p<0.003). This case series reports that salvage of an infected breast implant was achievable in up to 90% of women presenting with a documented infection, the majority requiring antibiotic management only. Early intervention is central to success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the long-term oncologic outcome after oncoplastic surgery (OPS). Background: OPS combines wide tumor excision with reduction mammoplasty techniques thus extending breast conserving surgery to large tumors that might else be proposed a mastectomy. Little data are available about the oncologic results for breast conserving surgery of these larger tumors. Methods: From January 2004 until March 2016, a total of 350 oncoplastic breast reductions were prospectively entered into a database. Patients were included if their breast reshaping included a reduction mammoplasty with skin excision (Level 2 oncoplastic techniques). Results: Histologic subtypes were: invasive ductal carcinoma in 219 cases (62.6%), ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) in 88 cases (25.1%), and invasive lobular carcinoma in 43 (12.3%) cases. Seventy-three of the invasive cancers (27.9%) received neoadjuvant chemotherapy. The mean resection weight was 177 grams. The mean pathological tumor size was 26 mm (range 0-180 mm) and varied from 23 mm (4-180 mm) for invasive cancers to 32 mm (0-100 mm) for DCIS. Specimen margins were involved in 12.6% of the cases; 10.5% of invasive ductal, 14.7% of DCIS, and 20.9% of invasive lobular. The overall breast conservation rate was 92% and varied from 87.4% for DCIS to 93.5% for the invasive cancers. Thirty-one patients (8.9%) developed one or more postoperative complications, inducing a delay in postoperative treatments in 4.6% of patients. The median follow up was 55 months. The cumulative 5-year incidences for local, regional, and distant recurrences were 2.2%, 1.1%, and 12.4%, respectively. Conclusions: Oncoplastic breast reductions allow wide resections with free margins and can be used for large cancers as an alternative to mastectomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With improvements in chemotherapy regimens, targeted therapies, and our fundamental understanding of the relationship of tumor subtype and pathologic complete response (pCR), there has been dramatic improvement in pCR rates in the past decade, especially among triple-negative and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-positive breast cancers. Rates of pCR in these groups of patients can be in the 60 % range and thus question the paradigm for the necessity of breast and nodal surgery in all cases, particularly when the patient will be receiving adjuvant local therapy with radiotherapy. Current practice for patients who respond well to neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NCT) is often to proceed with the same breast and axillary procedures as would have been offered women who had not received NCT, regardless of the apparent clinical response. Given these high response rates in defined subgroups among exceptional responders it is appropriate to question whether surgery is now a redundant procedure in their overall management. Further, definitive radiation without surgical resection with or without systemic therapy has been proven effective for several other malignant disease sites including some stages of esophageal, anal, laryngeal, prostate, cervical, and lung carcinoma. The main impediments for potential elimination of surgery have been the fact that prior and current standard and functional breast imaging methods are incapable of accurate prediction of residual disease and that integrating percutaneous biopsy of the breast primary and nodes following NCT may circumvent this issue. This article highlights historical attempts at omission of surgery following NCT in an earlier era, the current status of breast and nodal imaging to predict residual carcinoma, and ongoing and planned trials designed to identify appropriate patients who might be selected for clinical trials designed to test the safety of selected elimination of breast cancer surgery in percutaneous image-guided biopsy-proven exceptional responders to NCT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Z0011 trial demonstrated no difference in overall survival ( OS) and locoregional recurrence in breast cancer patients with a positive sentinel lymph node ( SLN) randomized to axillary lymph node dissection ( ALND) or no further surgery. The aim of this study was to evaluate locoregional recurrence in a nonrandomized group of SLN positive patients, in whom cALND was not performed, that were retrospectively categorized by the Z0011 eligibility criteria. From two hospital breast cancer databases consisting of 656 consecutive SLN positive breast cancer patients, 88 patients, who did not undergo cALND, were identified. This population was categorized by the Z0011 inclusion criteria (e.g., eligible versus ineligible) and the groups were compared. Thirty-four patients (38.6%) were retrospectively eligible for omitting cALND according to the Z0011 criteria and 54 (61.4%) were not. The median number of SLNs removed in both groups was 1 (range 1-5). The number of positive SLNs did not differ between the groups. Tumor size was slightly larger in the ineligible group (21 mm versus 19 mm) and 76% of patients in the ineligible group underwent a mastectomy. At a median follow-up of 26 months (range 1-84 months), one axillary recurrence was observed in the ineligible group versus 0 in the eligible group. Axillary recurrence was low, even in patients who did not meet the Z0011 inclusion criteria. Future trials that randomize Z0011 ineligible patients are needed to investigate long-term results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Historically, completion axillary lymph node dissection (cALND) is recommended in sentinel lymph node (SLN)-positive patients. However, the high rate of negative non-sentinel nodes (NSNs) in cALND and the reported low axillary recurrence rates have led to a more conservative approach. A risk score was developed to identify a patient's individual risk for NSN metastases. Methods: Data of 182 SLN-positive patients who underwent cALND were used for risk score development. The risk score, consisting of pathological tumor size (≤20/>20 mm), lymphovascular invasion (no/yes), extracapsular extension (no/yes), size of metastases (≤2/>2 mm), and number of positive SLNs (1/>1), was subsequently validated on an external population ( n = 180). Results: The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.78 (95 % CI 0.71-0.85) in the original population and 0.78 (95 % CI 0.70-0.85) in the validation population. Based on the predicted risk for positive NSNs, three groups were defined: low risk (≤20 %), intermediate risk (21-50 %), and high risk (>50 %). In total, 88 patients met the Z0011 inclusion criteria and none of them had a high predicted risk. Of the 199 non-Z0011 patients, 67 (33.7 %) had low risk, 96 (48.2 %) had intermediate risk, and 36 (18.1 %) had high risk. Conclusion: A simple risk score, integrating just five clinicopathological variables, was developed that may assist in individual decision making regarding ALND in SLN-positive patients outside of the Z0011 trial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]