PURPOSE: The combination of conservative surgery and radiotherapy is currently accepted as the preferred treatment for most patents with clinical stage I or II breast cancer. However, there is large amount of controversy concerning the optimal means of selecting patients and the details of the treatment technique. Breast cancer patients are being treated both in university hospitals and in community hospitals. Generally, the radiation therapy is not available in many community hospitals. Radiation therapy, which generally follows either a mastectomy or conservative surgery, is an important procedure. Therefore, the type of hospital facilities may influence which surgical procedures are selected. The authors conducted this study to analyse the current patterns of care for early invasive breast cancer in a hospital without a radiation therapy unit, even though the patient could receive such treatment from another affiliated hospital. METHODS: 131 cases of stage I and II breast cancer patients were reviewed between 1987 and 1997, and the types of treatments including surgery, radiation therapy and systemic therapy, were analysed retrospectively. RESULTS: The surgical procedures used were mainly a modified radical mastectomy (124/131, 94.7%), followed by breast conservation surgery (4/131, 3.1%), a total mastectomy (2/131, 1.5%) and a radical mastectomy (1/131, 0.8%). Radiation therapy was applied to 19 stage II patients (N=105), but not to any of the stage I patients (N=26). Systemic adju-vant therapy was done with chemotherapy (39/131, 29.8%), hormone therapy (17/131, 13.0%) and a combination of both modalities (67/131, 51.1%), with an exception of 8 cases. CONCLUSION:Breast c0onservation therapy for breast cancer patients was underutilized. The selection of the therapeutic method may be influenced by the facilities of the particular hospital. For proper treatment of early stage breast cancer, a surgeon must keep in close contact with bothe a radiologist and a radiotherapist, even in other affiliated hospitals.
Breast Neoplasms* ; Breast* ; Drug Therapy ; Hospitals, Community ; Hospitals, University ; Humans ; Mastectomy ; Mastectomy, Modified Radical ; Mastectomy, Radical ; Mastectomy, Simple ; Radiotherapy ; Retrospective Studies

PURPOSE: Fine needle aspiration cytology has a high sensitivity for the diagnosis of solitary thyroid nodules. Fine needle aspiration cytology (FNA) and frozen section biopsy (FS) have been used to distinguish benign lesions from malignant ones and for deciding the extent of the operative areas. In this study, we correlated data from fine needle aspiration cytology and frozen section biopsy, used in the diagnosis of thyroid nodules, to determine their effectiveness. METHODS: During the period from June 1996 to May 2001, the medical records of 104 patients who underwent a thyroidectomy for a thyroid nodule, at the department of surgery Inha university hospital, were reviewed retrospectively. One hundred and four cases were classified according to whether the FNA cytological diagnosis was inadequate, benign, suspicious, or malignant and the FS diagnosis benign or malignant. RESULTS: Permanent histopathological diagnoeis revealed that 44 cases were benign and 60 cases were malignant. According to the FNA cytologic interpretation, 11 cases were diagnosed as inadequate, 52 cases benign, 20 cases suspicious, and 21 cases malignant. The sensitivity and specificity for FNA alone were 87.8% and 67.3% respectively and for FS 100% and 91.7%. The accuracy of FNA and FS were 76.3% and 96.2% respectively. CONCLUSION: Based on the results, FNA cytology is a useful tool in the initial evaluation of the thyroid nodules and it is as reliable as FS for predicting malignant lesions. In the inadequate, benign and suspicious cases, intraoperative FS is a valuable diagnostic tool to confirm the cytological diagnosis and identify malignancy.
Biopsy* ; Biopsy, Fine-Needle* ; Diagnosis ; Frozen Sections* ; Humans ; Medical Records ; Retrospective Studies ; Sensitivity and Specificity ; Thyroid Nodule ; Thyroidectomy

PURPOSE: The combination of conservative surgery and radiotherapy is currently accepted as the preferred treatment for most patents with clinical stage I or II breast cancer. However, there is large amount of controversy concerning the optimal means of selecting patients and the details of the treatment technique. Breast cancer patients are being treated both in university hospitals and in community hospitals. Generally, the radiation therapy is not available in many community hospitals. Radiation therapy, which generally follows either a mastectomy or conservative surgery, is an important procedure. Therefore, the type of hospital facilities may influence which surgical procedures are selected. The authors conducted this study to analyse the current patterns of care for early invasive breast cancer in a hospital without a radiation therapy unit, even though the patient could receive such treatment from another affiliated hospital. METHODS: 131 cases of stage I and II breast cancer patients were reviewed between 1987 and 1997, and the types of treatments including surgery, radiation therapy and systemic therapy, were analysed retrospectively. RESULTS: The surgical procedures used were mainly a modified radical mastectomy (124/131, 94.7%), followed by breast conservation surgery (4/131, 3.1%), a total mastectomy (2/131, 1.5%) and a radical mastectomy (1/131, 0.8%). Radiation therapy was applied to 19 stage II patients (N=105), but not to any of the stage I patients (N=26). Systemic adjuvant therapy was done with chemotherapy (39/131, 29.8%), hormone therapy (17/131, 13.0%) and a combination of both modalities (67/131, 51.1%), with an exception of 8 cases. CONCLUSION: Breast conservation therapy for breast cancer patients was underutilized. The selection of the therapeutic method may be influenced by the facilities of the particular hospital. For proper treatment of early stage breast cancer, a surgeon must keep in close contact with bothe a radiologist and a radiotherapist, even in other affiliated hospitals.
Breast Neoplasms* ; Breast* ; Drug Therapy ; Hospitals, Community ; Hospitals, University ; Humans ; Mastectomy ; Mastectomy, Modified Radical ; Mastectomy, Radical ; Mastectomy, Simple ; Radiotherapy ; Retrospective Studies

PURPOSE: NO, a diatomic free radical, plays a diverse physiological and pathophysiological roles in the vascular, neuronal and immune systems. It is produced by nitric oxide synthase (NOS) which consists of three different isoforms. In this study we investigated NOS expression in 84 human breast carcinomas and its associations to other clinicopathological factors. METHODS: The immunohistochemical staining for NOS expression in 84 human breast carcinomas were performed and their medical records were reviewed retrospectively. RESULTS: iNOS expression in tumor cells was observed in 48.2% and eNOS expression was detected in 51.9%. iNOS expression in tumor cells has positive correlation with eNOS expression in tumor and is associated with iNOS expression in stroma and endothelial cells. Although iNOS expression in tumor cells has negative correlation with tumor size (P=0.047) and lymph node metastasis (P=0.002), it has no effects on 5 year overall and disease free survivals. iNOS expression in stroma also has negative correlation with tumor size (P=0.016) and nuclear grade (P=0.025). No significant correlation between eNOS expression and clinicopathological factors was observed but eNOS expression in tumor cells contributed to worse 5 year overall survivals (92.1% vs 77.0%) in marginal significance (P=0.053). CONCLUSION: These data suggest that iNOS expression in tumor may have an inhibitory effect in tumor growth and lymph node metastasis. These results may be further investigated.
Breast Neoplasms* ; Breast* ; Diatoms ; Endothelial Cells ; Humans ; Immune System ; Lymph Nodes ; Medical Records ; Neoplasm Metastasis ; Neurons ; Nitric Oxide Synthase* ; Nitric Oxide* ; Protein Isoforms ; Retrospective Studies