Surgical treatment of local recurrences of breast carcinoma in the skin and subcutaneous tissues.

Twenty-six cases of local recurrence of breast carcinoma in the skin and subcutaneous tissues after treatment with radical excision and large skin grafts or reconstruction are presented. Seventy-seven per cent of the patients were alive 2 years after the treatment. As a chest wall recurrence of breast cancer in the absence of distant metastases does not always indicate a generalization of the disease, radical reconstructive surgery is recommended as the therapy of choice.