Radiation therapy for operable breast cancer: sixty years of progress as seen through the articles published in the journal Cancer.

Abstract

This review examined the 60 years of progress made in treating breast cancer from the unique perspective of the reader of Cancer, with a specific emphasis on the evolution of radiation therapy, constituting a survey of the published articles in each decade, and the standards of treatment and controversies of their times that they portray, in 3 major areas: radiation as an adjuvant therapy to mastectomy, radiation for internal mammary lymph node treatment, and radiation with breast-conserving surgery as an alternative to mastectomy.