Can elderly patients with low-risk breast cancer benefit from radiotherapy?

Breast cancer therapy is developing towards individualized treatment, trying to maintain efficacy with the least aggressive treatment possible. After the introduction of breast-conserving surgery in the 1980s (1), data was updated in 2002 (2) and demonstrated the equivalence between mastectomy and breast conserving surgery (BCS) with radiotherapy. Since then, techniques have been evolving towards less intensive treatments such as accelerated partial breast irradiation (APBI) and intraoperative radiotherapy (IORT) for breast cancer. More than 40% of patients with breast cancer are diagnosed after 65 years of age (3). Conversely, as age increases, the probability of performing conservative treatment of breast cancer decreases at stages I and II, sentinel lymph node in N0, and radiotherapy, especially in patients over 80 years old decrease (4)