Local-Regional Treatment of the Patient With Inflammatory Breast Cancer

Abstract

Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) is a diagnosis based on a constellation of clinical features including a rapid onset of breast erythema and edema (peau d’orange) of a third or more of the skin of the breast and with a palpable border to the edema. Incidence has increased although it makes up only 1–4 % of all breast cancer diagnoses. In spite of some encouraging recent clinical outcome data, published local-regional control rates are consistently lower than expected in non-IBC and are of particular concern in this disease that readily progresses locally to carcinoma en cuirasse. With a focus on radiotherapy, this review provides a critical evaluation of the recent literature evaluating local-regional treatment of IBC, highlights new findings in the local-regional management of IBC, and offers an introduction to future directions regarding the optimal treatment and management of IBC.