Abstract
Following a clinical trial in which the Halsted mastectomy was compared to the less invasive quadrantectomy, no differences were reported in terms of local recurrence, disease-free or overall survival between the two. As a result, Umberto Veronesi was the first in the world to state that the radical mastectomy appeared to involve unnecessary mutilation in patients with breast cancer of less than 2 cm and no palpable axillary nodes.To date, the Veronesi quadrantectomy is routinely considered for breast cancer treatment. This brief review, which highlights the main advances over the last 50 years, is dedicated to Professor Umberto Veronesi.
Highlights
The Veronesi quadrantectomy represents a great milestone in the treatment of breast cancer, and currently, it is the first conservative protocol scientifically validated
The rationale of Umberto Veronesi during his long career was the minimum effective treatment obtaining the maximum of results in terms of oncological radicality, offering a high quality of life (QoL) with the best long term survival
Alongside these important scientific innovations, the best contribution of Umberto Veronesi in terms of patient care was the attention given to each oncologic patient
Summary
Received: 16/12/2016 ecancer 2017, 11:743 https://doi.org/10.3332/ecancer.2017.743 Copyright: © the authors; licensee ecancermedicalscience. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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