| Right after Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen discovered | | | | heralded, only eleven years later another NIH |
| x-rays at the end of the nineteenth century, radiation | | | | consensus meeting determined that breast |
| was shown to become effective in treating breast | | | | preservation with lumpectomy and radiation yielded |
| cancer. At about the same time, William Steward | | | | results equivalent to modified radical mastectomy. |
| Halstead, a surgeon, published his first paper on the | | | | Another new regular was established: less was indeed |
| radical mastectomy. Even though Halstead carried out | | | | better. The trend continues. These days the |
| drastic surgical procedures on ladies with advanced | | | | conventional axillary dissection is being replaced by |
| breast cancer in an era without having antibiotics, | | | | the lesser sentinel node biopsy, with a concomitant |
| enough ladies survived that the Halstead radical | | | | reduction of side effects. |
| mastectomy continued to become the regular of | | | | Clinical radiation trials are getting established to |
| care until the late 1970s. A consensus meeting of the | | | | determine whether limited field irradiation will be |
| National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1979 determined | | | | equivalent to whole-breast irradiation. The results will |
| that since rates of survival and recurrence were | | | | not be known for perhaps ten to fifteen years, but |
| essentially the same for the total mastectomy and | | | | radiation oncologists are still trying to do less. Similarly, |
| the modified total mastectomy, the modified version | | | | medical oncologists have shown that women with |
| was preferable. | | | | cancers smaller than one centimeter, who had, by |
| A modified radical mastectomy is far less disfiguring | | | | pathology, no breast cancer cells within the lymph |
| than a total mastectomy, and has far fewer negative | | | | nodes under the arm, do not require systemic |
| side effects overall. Soon after the consensus | | | | therapy. They require neither chemotherapy nor |
| meeting, modified radical mastectomy became the | | | | hormonal manipulation. |
| new regular of care. Although the change was | | | | |