Nearly all women will require surgery as part of their breast cancer treatment. Most often, the first step after being diagnosed with breast cancer is to meet with a surgeon who specializes in the removal of breast cancer. Your surgeon may recommend surgery as the first treatment, or after chemotherapy or immunotherapy to help reduce the size of the tumor first.
Our expert team of breast surgeons are specially trained in the surgical removal of benign (non-cancerous) and malignant (cancerous) tumors of the breast. The type of surgery that your surgeon recommends will depend upon multiple factors, such as the size of your tumor and breast, as well as the stage and biologic makeup of your cancer.
Breast cancer surgeries
Removes the tumor and a margin (a small rim of normal breast tissue around the tumor). The breast remains intact. This is also called breast-conserving surgery.
For small tumors, limited breast surgery has been shown to have similar outcomes to mastectomy when additional treatments such as radiation therapy are added.
Removes the tumor along with the entire breast tissue and skin.
Sometimes this can be done with preservation of some of the overlying skin and/or nipple areolar complex (skin-sparing mastectomy).
Breast reconstruction may be an option after a mastectomy.
Combines traditional methods of breast cancer surgery while utilizing specialized techniques to help improve cosmetic outcomes.
Removes the first lymph node(s) draining the breast, or all of the lymph nodes draining the breast, to check if the cancer has left the breast.
This is recommended for most invasive forms of breast cancer but is usually not done for non-invasive disease (ductal carcinoma in situ, DCIS).