The Incidence Of Cancer In The Second Breast After Radical Removal Of One Breast For Cancer

1. ALSON R. KILGORE, M.D.

1. 
   
   Instructor in Surgery, University of California Medical School; Member Surgical Staff, St. Luke’s Hospital SAN FRANCISCO

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Excerpt

The appearance of cancer in the remaining breast after radical removal of one breast for cancer is of interest both on theoretical and on practical grounds: first, on account of its bearing on the problem of individual susceptibility to cancer, or the existence of a “cancer diathesis.” Is cancer a pure accident, or does its occurrence mean that the person affected is more susceptible to it than another, and therefore more likely to be attacked again if cured of the first tumor? In the second place, the practical question is raised of the advisability of removal of the second breast to protect against cancer.

A discussion of the first problem, that of a “cancer diathesis,” or individual susceptibility to cancer, is made difficult by the impossibility of deciding with certainty, in a given case, whether a cancer developing in the second breast after an interval of years is a true

Footnotes

• Read before the Section on Surgery, General and Abdominal, at the Seventy-Second Annual Session of the American Medical Association, Boston, June, 1921.