Conserving Surgery in Inflammatory Breast Cancer After Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy

Inflammatory breast cancer is an aggressive and rare form of breast cancer, which accounts for 2-3% of all breast cancers. The classic presentation of inflammatory breast cancer includes erythema, edema, and peau d'orange of at least one/third of the breast.

Current treatment of inflammatory breast cancer include: neoadjuvant chemiotherapy, modified radical mastectomy and radiation therapy.

In the last two decades the development of new targeted therapies has significantly improved the efficacy of neoadjuvant chemiotherapy allowing a de-escalation of surgical treatment in patients with non-inflammatory breast cancer that achieve clinical complete response.

There are few retrospective studies that evaluate implications of surgical treatment on survival among these patients. This may justify trial aims to investigate the possible use of the breast conserving surgery in patients with inflammatory breast cancer that achieve clinical complete response after neoadjuvant chemiotherapy.