Background: Our goal is to identify subgroups of women undergoing breast-conserving therapy (BCT) who are at increased risk for requiring a secondary surgical procedure, and to identify tumor and patient profiles that will allow surgeons to anticipate the need for taking larger margins when removing the tumor.
Methods: One hundred female patients who had palpable, invasive carcinomas of the breast, and had undergone a primary BCT, were included in the study. Of these, all women (n = 25) who had incomplete resections, or questionable margins of resection, had to undergo re-excisions.