One-day surgery in a series of 150 breast cancer patients: efficacy and cost-benefit analysis.

Financing health-care expenditure has become increasingly more difficult. Considering the high frequency of breast cancer, which affects one million women in the world each year, the reductions of medical expenditure for the treatment of this disease is highly desirable within the limits of medical efficiency and safety. One hundred and fifty patients with carcinoma of the breast underwent surgery in our department with one-day hospitalization.

[Day surgery in a multidisciplinary breast unit].

The most recent studies on breast surgery have led us to radio-guided surgery which enables us to identify the sentinel lymph node and thus to remove just a single lymph node. As a result, we are moving in the direction of an increasingly conservative surgical technique which may be carried out in the day surgery setting. This kind of surgery requires both an extremely accurate and prompt diagnosis and a multidisciplinary breast unit, inasmuch as only the collaboration and teamwork of highly qualified staff are capable of furnishing a rapid, accurate diagnosis; in addition, during the operation it may be necessary to perform x-rays or ultrasonography on the surgical specimen.