Lumpectomy Fine for Lobular Breast Cancers

MONDAY, May 8 (HealthDay News) -- Breast-conserving surgery (BCT) can be used to treat invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC) of the breast, as it is with invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC), without increasing the future need for additional surgeries, a new study finds.

IDC accounts for 85 percent of breast cancers, and ILC accounts for 10 percent. That means that much of the current data supporting mammography for breast cancer screening and treatment with BCT was obtained solely from patients with IDC, the study authors noted.

In the study, researchers at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia compared 318 ILC with 634 IDC patients.

They found no difference in the success rate of breast-conserving surgery (also called lumpectomy) or the number of surgical procedures. The findings challenge recent reports that breast-conserving surgery may not be appropriate for patients with ILC.

The ILC patients in this study were older, had larger tumors compared to IDC patients (2.6 centimeters vs. 2.1 cm), and more "occult" tumors -- those not detected during routine screening, the researchers noted.

The study appears in the June 15 issue of Cancer.

The researchers concluded that "the findings of our study do not support the idea that infiltrating lobular carcinoma is more difficult to treat surgically than infiltrating ductal carcinoma," and that the data does "not provide justification for the routine use of MRI in the breast cancer patient newly diagnosed with infiltrating lobular carcinoma."

Routine mammograms and breast exams don't typically detect ILC, which means it's usually identified at later stages than IDC.