ABSTRACT

In recent years, new molecules on breast cancer cells, with predictive and prognostic value, have been detected and new therapies against these targets have been developed. Surgeons performing breast cancer surgery should be aware of these targets in diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up of the patients. Establishing the primary diagnosis with a core needle biopsy is important to verify prognostic and predictive factors in breast cancer before surgery and to help perform breast conserving surgical procedures. More breast conserving surgery can be performed with the addition of HER2 targeting molecules to the neoadjuvant chemotherapy protocols. The results of the studies evaluating the choice of surgical procedure in HER2 positive breast cancer patients should be cautiously interpreted since they are retrospective in nature and contain small number of patients. For this reason, in order to reach a correct decision on the surgical procedure, there is a need for prospective randomized trials with a larger number of patients.