Allen S. Lichter, MD

Postmastectomy radiotherapy has been used since the early part of the 20th century in an effort to decrease local recurrences and potentially improve survival. It clearly reduces the rate of local chest-wall failure following mastectomy, increases relapse-

In an early meta-analysis of the post-mastectomy radiotherapy trials, the use of obsolete radiotherapy techniques resulted in increased cardiac mortality. With maturation of these data and inclusion of more recent