RATIONALE: Breast-conserving surgery is a less invasive type of surgery for breast cancer and may have fewer side effects and improve recovery.

PURPOSE: This phase II trial is studying different breast-conserving surgery techniques in treating women with breast cancer.

OBJECTIVES:

Primary

• Evaluate the percentage of histologically healthy margins maintained during resection in women with breast cancer.

Secondary

• Evaluate local recurrence at 5 years.
• Evaluate aesthetic results.
• Evaluate quality of life using the QLQC30 and BR23 questionnaires.

OUTLINE: This is a multicenter study.

Patients undergo oncoplastic conservative surgery according to defined modalities across the various centers.

Quality of life is assessed periodically.

After completion of study treatment, patients are followed every 6 months for 2 years and then for at least 3 years.

DISEASE CHARACTERISTICS:

• Meets 1 of the following criteria:

  • Diagnosis of intraductal breast cancer requiring a wide local resection
  • Diagnosis of infiltrating ductal breast cancer within range
  • Diagnosis of invasive breast cancer that has not responded well to neoadjuvant treatment

• No multicentric tumor

• No gigantomastia

• Hormone receptor status not specified

PATIENT CHARACTERISTICS:

• Menopausal status not specified
• No patients subject to a measure of legal protection or unable to express consent
• No patients deprived of liberty by judicial or administrative decision or hospitalized without patient consent
• Not pregnant or nursing

PRIOR CONCURRENT THERAPY:

• No prior radiotherapy to the diseased breast
• No prior adjuvant treatment
• No concurrent participation in another clinical research study