Irene Wapnir, MD, is the chief of breast surgery at the Stanford Cancer Institute and an associate professor of surgery at the Stanford University School of Medicine, both in California. She also is the co-chair of a multicenter international trial investigating treatment for women who develop a recurrence of breast cancer after mastectomy or lumpectomy.
Patients are confused, and no wonder—because doctors don’t even agree on the name, much less on how aggressively to treat…