Breast radiotherapy is a technical challenge in women with pectus excavatum. We aim to assess isocentric lateral decubitus (ILD) technique as a means to irradiate breasts for patients with pectus excavatum. Four women presenting with left-sided breast cancers and found to have pectus excavatum were offered breast-conserving treatments. Post-operative breast radiotherapy was indicated (50 Gy) in two patients, with an additional boost to the tumour bed (16 Gy). Both ILD and supine techniques were simulated. We report the dosimetric comparison of these techniques and the acute skin toxicity of ILD radiotherapy. ILD permitted the same breast dose-homogeneity as the supine technique while decreasing breast thickness by 4.5-6.8 cm. The width of lung and/or heart receiving > 20 Gy ranged between 2.1 cm and 4.3 cm with the supine technique and between 0.5 cm and 1.1 cm with ILD. The estimated percentage of ipsilateral lung receiving > 20 Gy ranged from 21% to 34% with the supine technique and from 0% to 5% with ILD. Acute skin toxicity was scored 1 for all patients at completion of ILD radiotherapy. ILD is an effective breast radiotherapy technique for patients with pectus excavatum that preserves the underlying heart and lung from unnecessary toxicity.

AIM:To retrospectively assess the acute and long-term toxicity using aromatase inhibitors (AI) therapy concurrently with hypofractionated radiotherapy (HFRT) in breast cancer patients.

The characteristics of ipsilateral breast tumour recurrences (IBTRs) relative to those of their primary tumours (PTs) remain scarcely studied. Of 70 young (p40 years) premenopausal women with IBTRs, we studied a series of 63 with paired histological data. Median follow-up since IBTR was 10 years. Rates of histological types, grades or hormonal receptors were not significantly different in PTs and in IBTRs. The concordance between IBTRs and their PTs was good for histological types. IBTRs with conserved histological types tended to occur more locally, but not significantly sooner than others. These IBTRs had good concordance for hormone receptors. In discordant cases there were as many losses as appearances of the receptors. The concordance was weak for grades, with equivalent numbers of IBTRs graded lower as higher than their PTs. The 10-year overall survival rate was 70%. Neither the conservation of histological type, location, nor of the two combined were associated with deaths. Early (o2 years) IBTRs, tended to be associated with poorer survival (HR ¼ 2.24 (0.92 -5.41); P ¼ 0.08). IBTRs did not display features of higher aggressiveness than PTs. Neither clinical nor histological definition of a true recurrence could be established other than the conservation of the histological type. British Journal of Cancer (2007) Breast-conserving treatments of early stage breast cancer exposes the patient to the risk of ipsilateral breast tumour recurrence (IBTR). The most important prognostic factor for local recurrence is the young age of the patient (Vrieling et al, 2003) and this remains true among young (o40 years old), premenopausal women treated either by surgery first (Bollet et al, 2007) or by neoadjuvant chemotherapy (Oh et al, 2006). Many questions remain unanswered concerning the real nature of these ipsilateral breast tumour recurrences. We shall examine how different they are from primary tumours and whether there are clinical or histological factors to help distinguish between a re-growth of malignant cells not removed by surgery and not killed by radiotherapy (also called a true recurrence, TR) and a de novo malignancy arising from mammary epithelial cells of residual breast tissues (also known as new primary tumours, NP) (Haffty et al, 1993). Some have implied that ipsilateral breast tumour recurrences should display features of, at least as much aggressiveness (differentiation (Huang et al, 2002), ploidy (Haffty et al, 1993) and percentage of invasiveness (Haffty et al, 1993;Smith et al, 2000;Huang et al, 2002)) to qualify as true recurrences. We shall see whether biological evidence can be found to support this definition. Finally, we shall investigate whether the characteristics of ipsilateral breast tumour recurrences are associated with prognosis. PATIENTS AND METHODSOut of a previously described series of 209 premenopausal women, younger than 40 years old, treated at the Institut Curie between 1985 and 1995 for early breast cancers (clinical T1-2, N0-1 ; Sobin and Wittekind, 2002) with primary brea...