Healing dynamics and surgery in breast cancer: rethinking a timeless challenge in light of advancing therapies and technologies

BACKGROUND: During the last century, surgery became the primary approach for treating breast cancer. However, the introduction of new surgical techniques, increasingly less invasive and more conservative, did not always provide consistent benefits in inhibiting tumor progression. MAIN BODY: Inflammatory mechanisms involved in wound repair of surgical damage play a significant role in the progression of cancer. In this review we focused on the healing-induced inflammation processes that can favor residual tumor cells and on the latest current methods, which improve the rate of total tumor excision during the first operation or contribute to diminish host systemic inflammation boosting immune system activation in breast cancer patients. CONCLUSIONS: Surgery is still a crucial area of breast cancer research that attempts to understand how it might affect breast cancer progression and, ultimately, survival outcomes.