The Evolution of Surgery for Breast Cancer from Radical to Sublime: Historical Review

Breast cancer is one disease that has been dreaded for centuries. Cancer of the breast, was generally regarded as incurable, and those methods employed in the hope of a cure, or at least to relieve pain and prolong life, were often gruesome and dreadful. With regard to the surgical cure of this disease, there has been a giant paradigm shift, from the disfiguring and loathsome surgeries like amputation of breast, super-radical mastectomy to the sublime breast ‘conserving’ and ‘oncoplastic’ surgeries. In this article, we do a review of the literature and try to elucidate the factors that have led to this giant paradigm shift. Also, we review the current trends in the surgical treatment of breast cancer.