A review of methods of intraoperative margin assessment in breast conserving surgery

Breast conserving therapy is the primary treatment modality in early-stage breast cancer patients. Despite the development of methods for the intraoperative assessment of tumor margins, still 20-30% of patients require re-resection due to postoperative tumor infiltration at the surgery margins. In recent years, many methods have been developed to reduce the number of re-resection due to margins infiltration. Here we review the current methods together with several more techniques being under investigation.