Optimal Timing of Surgery after Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy of Breast Cancer

During recent decades, our understanding of thecharacteristics of breast cancer has improved,leading to improvements in individualized treatmentmethods historically, neoadjuvant chemotherapy(NAC) was limited to inoperable breast cancer , 1however, according to the results of several studiesin some centers around the world this method hasbecome the routine practice in almost all stages ofbreast cancer (except for the very early ones).Initially, theories suggested that NAC may result inmore rapid eradication of micrometastatic diseaseincreasing overall survival (OS). Although studiescould not confirm this theory, NAC has led to anincrease in the rates of breast conserving therapy(BCT), a decrease in the extent of local treatment(e.g. axillary dissection) and as a result, bettercosmetic outcomes. Other benefits of NAC that 2made this method popular include providingprognostic and therapeutic information based on invivo tumor response, turning inoperable tumors intooperable ones and providing enough time for genetictesting and breast reconstruction.