AM S J
The history of breast cancer surgery: Halsted’s radical mastectomy and beyond
Intern, Gosford Hospital
swimming.
Breast cancer is common. One in eight Australian women will be
William Halsted (born 1852) was an American surgeon whose considered one of the ‘Big Four’ founding physicians of John Hopkins control trial comparing radical mastectomy to the ‘quadrantectomy’. breast surgery had resulted in poor long term results and prognosis.
who were aged less than 70 years. The quandrantectomy was combined
of breast cancer. The radical mastectomy was implemented for breast trial comparing the radical mastectomy with total mastectomy with or
radical mastectomy may not always be the most appropriate surgical management. Halsted proposed that although breast cancer begins as a local procedure, such as sparing of the pectoralis muscles, as well as further
that the mastectomy was not altered by male surgeons because of the
held in such high regard that no one dared alter his procedure, with
rapidly.
no method of grading or staging cancers as there is now, a problem he
forays into and case reports of the super-radical mastectomy, simple
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