Background: There are currently two widely used methods for preoperative localization of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) of the breast: wire-guided localization (WGL) and radioactive seed localization (RSL). Several studies compared these localization techniques in small cohorts.
Objective: The aim of this study was to compare the surgical resection margin status between RSL and WGL in a large national cohort of patients with DCIS.
Patients and methods: We included patients from the Dutch Pathology Registry who underwent breast-conserving surgery for DCIS by either RSL (n = 1851) or WGL (n = 2187) between 2009 and 2019. Several clinicopathological characteristics were compared between these two groups, including resection margin status and number of re-excisions.
Results: Patients undergoing RSL were younger (p = 0.014) and were more often diagnosed with a large DCIS (p = 0.013), high grade DCIS (p < 0.001) and comedonecrosis (p < 0.001) compared with patients undergoing WGL. There was no significant difference in resection margin status between both groups (p = 0.089) and the number of re-excisions (p = 0.429). However, in case of re-excision, patients in the RSL group were more often treated with breast-conserving surgery (p = 0.029).
Conclusion: In this large national cohort study of patients with DCIS, we demonstrated that there was no difference in resection margin status between both procedures, or in the number of re-excisions, but patients in the RSL group were more often treated with breast-conserving therapy in case of a re-excision.