Effectiveness of radiation therapy and combined radiation and surgical treatment in advanced breast cancer.

The effectiveness of two modes of combined radiation-surgery treatment and the correlation between the therapeutic results and the clinical type of primary breast cancer were followed in a group of 221 patients with Ca mammae in the III clinical stage. As criteria of evaluating, use was made of analysis of the temporal sequence of relapses and metastases formation following primary treatment. The higher effectiveness of the mode--surgery combined with pre- and postoperative irradiation as against that of surgery with only post-operative radiotherapy became manifest in the frequency of relapses but not in that of distant metastase formation. Simultaneously, a relationship has been established between the course of the disease after treatment and the various categories of T, or its dependence on the relation between the primary tumor and the skin and this within the IIIrd clinical stage of breast cancer.