A survey of margin status evaluation in the Korean Breast Cancer Society member

Aim/Background

In breast conserving surgery (BCS), it is important to get a clear resection margin. Recently, “no ink on tumor” has been raised as an appropriate surgical margin. This study aims to investigate the behavior of margin evaluation and enforcement re-excision Korean Breast Cancer Society (KBCS) members.

Methods

This study investigated March 2014 via e-mail to target KBCS members of the BCS surgical specimen orientation, frozen section(FS) underwent if and how, mastectomy conversion whether, pathologic reporting methods and criteria were the re-excision the surgeon.

Results

A total of 126 surgeons were response from 79 institutions, they can have breast cancer surgery during the year 2013 is about 20,000 cases. Most were tagged for specimen orientation (95.7%), resection margin assessment was performed in 82.9% and all methods were used for FS. Frozen section biopsy sampling methods are collected at the rate at which the specimen (48.1%) and the cavity (51.9%) were similar. Most surgeons responded that they were able to enforce mastectomy conversion of the surgery (92.3%). Invasive cancer and ductal carcinoma in situ(DCIS) of the margin re-excision indication in accordance with the results of the comparison, margin positive in that case the ratio invasive cancer re-excision with DCIS in the ratio was similar (invasive cancer 72.6%, DCIS 71.8%), never implemented does not rates are a little higher in DCIS(invasive cancer 2.6%, DCIS 6.0%).

Conclusions

Korea has yet higher incidence of intraoperative margin assessment using FS and setting standards of margin re-excision is low. It seems to need a presentation of the appropriate standards.

Clinical trial identification

Disclosure

All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.