Shaving as an Safe Alternative to Frozen Section Analysis

Breast cancer remains the most common malignancy among women worldwide and represents a major health burden. Breast-conserving surgery (BCS) has become the standard of care for early-stage breast cancer, aiming to achieve complete tumor excision with histologically clear margins combined with adjuvant radiotherapy, offers equivalent survival rates to mastectomy in early-stage cases.

. Positive surgical margins are strongly associated with increased rates of local recurrence and frequently necessitate re-excision.

Traditionally, intraoperative frozen section analysis (FSA) has been used to assess margin status. However, this technique has several drawbacks, including:

• Limited availability in many centers.
• Requires high-experienced cytopathologists making it challenging in resource-limited places.
• Adds substantial cost.
• Time consuming (prolonged operative time).

• Recently, the tumor bed cavity shaving (TBCS) has been introduced as a more practical alternative technique that can reduce the incidence of positive margins without relying on intraoperative pathology.

tumor bed cavity shaving (TBCS) means additional thin layers of tissue approximately 5:10 mm in thickness are removed circumferentially from the cavity walls .

With many advantages:

• feasible in centers lacking intraoperative pathological facilities.
• Time saving (significantly reduces the overall operative time).
• cost-effectiveness.
• Technically simple (Easy to perform without the need for specialized equipment or advanced facilities).
• it represents a suitable option in low- to medium-socioeconomic settings, where resources and advanced intraoperative support may be limited.

• It is expected to demonstrate comparable oncological safety to Intraoperative Frozen Section Analysis (FSA) in achieving margin negativity with Significant reduction anticipated in Positive margin rates&Re-excision frequency&Operative duration and Overall procedural cost.

Inclusion criteria

• Female patients aged ≥18 years.
• Diagnosed with unifocal, operable invasive breast carcinoma.
• Suitable for breast-conserving surgery. Criteria:

Exclusion criteria

-Contraindication of Breast-Conserving Surgery.