Half a century of women’s breast cancer study and treatment A personal biographical journey

Abstract

One of the main challenges I faced during my scientific career at the Warsaw Centre of Oncology is the problem of breast cancer disease in women. In Poland, Tadeusz Koszarowski was a pioneer in this field, who already in 1947 had published in the Polski Tygodnik Lekarski journal on ‘Diagnosis and treatment of women’s breast cancer’, whilst in 1950 he published ‘Progress in breast cancer surgery and patient outcomes in those treated at the Warsaw Radium Institute’ in the Nowotwory journal. At that time Leon Manteuffel and Witold Rudowski had also published papers on breast cancer. In 1953, Tadeusz Koszarowski created a surgical oncology ward, (and later a clinic), which at the time was the first centre in Poland that established national standard procedures in this field. Within the last 50 years, 114 papers were published on breast cancer, whose authors had performed surgery and undertaken other clinical work at the Centre of Oncology in Warsaw at 15 Wawelska Street. This work is listed in the Surgical Oncology Clinic Staff bibliography during 1947–1988 as prepared by Edward Towpik and published by the Oncology Institute (Fig. 1). The publication list and its order aptly illustrates the study of breast cancer in women. At the start, outcomes were evaluated following the Halsted operation, the role of axillary and parasternal lymph nodes and hormonal therapy consisting of removing the oestrogen source by means of ovariectomy and adrenalectomy. Later in the 1960s, there were developments made in chemotherapy involving introduction of CMF and other drugs, breast-conserving treatment, rehabilitation, methods of breast reconstruction, genetic and molecular research; all leading to treatment being individualised. There is however no internet record of some 35 papers that I been co-author, which adequately traces the history of such developments in Poland. In 1994, the Breast Cancer Clinic at the Ursynow campus was launched under the directorship of Tadeusz Pieńkow ski. This was the first organ-specific clinic of its kind in Poland where women with breast cancer were investigated, overtaking the currently then preferred ‘Breast Units’ option. The clinic possesses a plethora of clinical and scientific data as detailed in many publications which are currently now made available throughout the world.