Breast Cancer Ablation: Current Status 2006

The decrease in average size of breast cancer at presentation has spurred interest into less invasive forms of local treatment. Techniques to ablate breast cancer within the breast without surgery are being studied in many countries. Interdisciplinary comprehensive breast centers strive to keep current with new technologies such as ablation. The goal of these efforts is to destroy the breast cancer effectively with minimally invasive methods and in a patient-friendly manner. Current methods of breast cancer ablation are reviewed and compared in effectiveness, ease of use, cost, discomfort, and existing published data. A major hurdle for all methods is to identify proper candidates for targeted ablation. When pretreatment imaging identifies truly unifocal breast cancers, one or more of these methods will be ready to treat these small unifocal cancers effectively.