Abstract

Breast conserving surgery has become the preferred method of treatment for breast cancer. Therefore clear surgical margin is critical to minimize the risk of local recurrence. Although paraffin section of inked surgical margin is the gold standard for margin assessment, this process is time consuming, and results are not available until after the operation. Several methods of intraoperative margin assessment are available including gross evaluation of the tumor specimen, specimen slice radiography, pathologic evaluation with touch preparation cytology or frozen section analysis. Here I review three methods of pathologic evaluation -macroscopic evaluation, touch preparation cytology, and frozen section- and deal with problems and pitfalls that can happen in routine diagnostic fields.

• Keywords: Surgical margin, Breast cancer, Intraoperative;