The new staging classification: is it useful for clinicians? S Eva Singletary

For most of recorded history, breast cancer was treated as a homogeneous disease, one that invariably required the most extreme measures to have a chance for a cure. As early as 1600 BC, Egyptian physicians were treating breast cancer with cauterization. Extensive surgeries aimed at removing the entire breast area, frequently including surrounding muscles and bone, were documented during the Renaissance, and later adapted by Halsted as the standard of care in the 19th century.1