Breast Pathology and Cancer

Biography

Biography: Nam-Sun Paik

Abstract

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among Korean women, and still shows annual 6.1% increasing.. Common causes of breast cancer includes first birth at late age, early menarche and late menopause, hormone replacement therapy, high fat and high calorie diet (BMI↑), alcohol abuse, low physical activity and genetic factors 24,000 in Korea, 2017.

The survival rate of breast cancer patient in Korea was much improved with early detection with every 2 year national screeing program and new treatment modalities which includes chemotherapy, radiotherapy, immunotherapy, hormonal therapy, target therapy and multimodality therapy including precision medicine. The 5-year and 10-year survival was 91.2% and 84.8% respectively. So breast cancer specialists started to consider about patients’ quality of life and developed new surgical technic (oncoplastic surgery) without change of recurrence and survival rates.

Breast conserving surgery (BCS) has showed gradually increasing tendency in Korea, currently about 70%, which may be preferable to mastectomy in terms of psychologically and cosmetically, Recently in Korea we have much considered for Oncoplastic surgery.

The principles of oncoplastic surgery of the breast are based on complete removal of breast cancer with minimal scarring and producing optimal breast shape and size. It includes careful preoperative planning as part of a multidisciplinary approach and a surgical plan that will result in optimal cancer management and the best possible aesthetic outcome. Some cases we treat the patients with neoadjuvant chemotherapy  with or without target therapy for good results.

Conclusion: Incidence of breast cancer increases according to improvement of economic status and women’s environmental factors in Korea. So breast cancer specialists should consider not only recurrence  and survival rate but also QOL with BCS or oncoplastic surgery.