title: Vera Peters and the conservative management of early-stage breast cancer.
abstract: During the first three quarters of the twentieth century, radical mastectomy was an accepted and common procedure in the management of patients with early stage cancer of the breast. After a lifetime of thinking about and working with patients with early-stage breast cancer, Vera Peters presented and published, in the mid-1970s, a retrospective historical case-control study that demonstrated the lack of a survival benefit for radical or modified radical mastectomy as compared with more conservative surgery with lumpectomy. In the years that followed, prospective randomized studies confirmed her findings.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, University of Toronto, and Cancer Care Ontario, Toronto, ON. Don.Cowan@cancercare.on.ca
authors.forename: D H
authors.initials: DH
authors.lastname: Cowan
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