Role of surgery in metastatic breast cancer

Breast cancer is the most common malignant tumor in Mexican women and very often patients present with advanced stages. Patients with metastatic breast cancer have limited therapeutic options and the mainstay of treatment in this disease stage is systemic chemotherapy. Traditionally, the role of surgery in this context is limited to symptom palliation. The increase in efficiency of chemotherapy drugs and the new endocrine and molecular targeted therapy has prolonged the life expectancy of this group of patients and has expanded surgical indications beyond palliation. Some recent institutional reports suggest increasing survival of patients who undergo resection of limited metastatic disease. On another hand, there are reports of survival benefit when the primary tumor is removed even in presence of metastatic disease. We conducted a systematic review of the literature with the objective to analyze the role of surgery in the multidisciplinary management of metastatic breast cancer in order to improve the prognosis of this increasing group of patients.