Oncoplastic Surgery of Multicentric (Multifocal) Breast Cancer

The breast-conserving treatment, in essence, implies not only providing breast-conserving surgery (BCS), but also adjuvant radiation therapy, that significantly reduces the risk of disease loco-regional and distant recurrence and is considered as an integral part of breast cancer conservative treatment [1,2]. Traditionally, appearance of more than one malignant tumor, in one or several breast quadrants, might be referred to as multifocal and multicentric breast cancers (MMBC). In addition, multifocal lesions localized in one quadrant of the breast are commonly referred to as multifocal cancers and multifocal lesions of different quadrants of the same or both breasts – multicentric cancers, respectively [3-5]. Such difference in definitions might be caused by different morphogenesis of tumor growth: in case of multifocal cancer, multiple tumors originate within an intraductal system of one quadrant, while at multicentric cancer, several focuses of tumor growth, appear in the intraductal system of different quadrants. Consequently, it can be concluded that, multifocal cancer is a monoclonal disease rather than multicentric [6].