This type of surgery removes only the minimum amount of breast tissue possible in order to leave behind most part of the breast. A lot of women prefer this type of surgery nowadays instead of having a mastectomy because they feel very bad when having only one breast and this can affect their future life. Even if in the past the mastectomy was prefered because it was considered safer, now many doctors agree to this kind of surgery because they are backed up by the statistical data that says that both kinds of surgery have the same death rates and survival rates, so the difference does not justify the cutting of the whole breast.
One of the most common types of breast cancer surgery, also used in more advanced stages is mastectomy. It consists of the total removal of the breast, most of the times together with nearby tissue. Certain women can have both breasts removed in this surgery and then it will be called a double mastectomy. Some women decide to have this surgery even if they are not suffering from breast cancer yet. However, they are considered to have a very high risk because many members of her family have had this type of cancer and they decide to have a double mastectomy as a prophylactic method, to prevent the cancer from ever developing in the breasts.
It may sound scary, but most women only stay hospitalized for one day when having this type of surgery.The partial mastectomy only removes a part of the breast, not the entire breast. However, after surgery the margins of the tissue are examined carefully and if there are any signs of cancer cells found there, it means that the cancer has not all been removed and there might be a second surgery again soon.
The axillary lymph node dissection is one of the types of breast cancer surgery that is performed with the purpose of dissecting the lymph nodes in the armpit in order to see if the cancer has spread to them or not. It is very important in staging the disease and establishing the proper diagnosis, but it does not have a curative effect. If one of the nodes in this area is affected and has breast cancer, it is very likely that the cancer has already spread to other parts of the body by using the lymphatic system or the blood stream.
The sentinel lymph node biopsy is quite similar to the previous type , because it involves the armpit lymph nodes, but this time the doctors are looking for the closest one. They want to find out exactly how far the cancer has spread and what is the direction of spreading and that is why they usually inject a coloured substance in the tumour and watch carefully to see what are the lymph nodes close by that also get coloured. This time the number of lymph nodes taken out during surgery is smaller and they are thoroughly examined under microscope to see the development of breast cancer.
The last type of breast cancer surgery mentioned here is the reconstructive surgery that is perfomed after the cancer is gone and the woman wants to continue her life as a normal woman, so she wants to have a breast reconstruction. This surgery is cloder to plastic surgery than to cancer surgery, though.