Can Anesthetic Technique for Primary Breast Cancer Surgery Affect Recurrence or Metastasis?

Regional anesthesia is known to prevent or attenuate the surgical stress response; therefore, inhibiting surgical stress by paravertebral anesthesia might attenuate perioperative factors that enhance tumor growth and spread. The authors hypothesized that breast cancer patients undergoing surgery with paravertebral anesthesia and analgesia combined with general anesthesia have a lower incidence of cancer recurrence or metastases than patients undergoing surgery with general anesthesia and patient-controlled morphine analgesia.

In this retrospective study, the authors examined the medical records of 129 consecutive patients undergoing mastectomy and axillary clearance for breast cancer between September 2001 and December 2002.