Noninvasive carcinoma of the breast: the rationale for various treatment options.

As a result of the increasing utilization of screening mammography, the incidence of noninvasive breast cancers has been steadily climbing. This phenomenon has inspired questions about the biological behavior and natural history of this disease and has sparked a controversy about which patients should be treated by local excision alone or local excision followed by breast irradiation and which patients require a mastectomy for disease-free survival. New data have been published within the past year shedding some light on these issues, but questions remain.