The role of surgical clips in Breast Conserving Therapy: Systematic review of the Literature

Abstract

Abstract Introduction Conservative breast therapy consists of wide local excision followed by local control of the breast cancer by boost radiotherapy. For radiologists, identification of breast tumor bed (TB) is an essential first step for them to start their radiotherapy. There is number of ways to identify the tumor bed, one of them is inserting the metallic clips in the tumor bed cavity intraoperative. They mark the tumor cavity against the whole breast normal tissue as they appear radioopaque during radiotherapy. Purpose The primary aim of this study is to investigate the need & validity of surgical clips insertion in breast tumor bed and its effect on further breast radiotherapy through a systematic review that includes all published studies which used clips for marking the breast tumor bed. The secondary aim is to define the needed number of surgical clips to define the breast tumor bed clearly and obviously and what are the best types of surgical clips to be used for this purpose. Methods The literature review was done by searching on different databases using the keywords for only English studies reporting using surgical clips for localization in breast surgeries. There was no restriction to specific period or study design. Assessment of included studies was done by 2 independent researchers. Results 54 articles (n = 3427 patients) were the total number of studies that met our inclusion criteria. These studies were of different study designs. Cohort studies were the most representing type about 40 articles. The most common used clips type (21 study, n = 1444 patient) was metallic hemostatic clips according to the sum of operated patients and count of studies. Although all studies confirmed the importance and effectiveness of using clips for tumor bed localization, there was no standard optimum number of clips that can be used for localization. However, most studies used definite number of clips as 4 or 5 clips or used number ranging from 1-5 clips. The same for inserted clips margins at tumor bed, only few studies mentioned definite cavity margins. The 4 main margins (anterior, posterior, superior, inferior) were the commonest reported sites. Conclusion Using surgical clips whatever their type is very helpful for radiologists to define breast tumor bed especially with the obvious increase in using oncoplastic techniques. It’s recommended to use more than 5 clips at tumor bed cavity with special concern to insert them at least 4 margins of tumor bed.