THE SURGEON

James Harvey is a consultant breast surgeon at manchester University NHs Foundation Trust.

There are 55,000 new cases of breast cancer in the UK each year but, thanks to screening and more sensitive mammograms, we are picking them up earlier, when they are easier to treat.

Most small breast cancers can be treated surgically with a lumpectomy, removing the tumour and a margin of healthy tissue around it.

Cancers smaller than 2cm are too small to feel or see from outside the breast, so we need to locate them before surgery . This usually means women need a scan on the day of surgery . In the past, we would put a 20cm needle, 1.5mm wide, into the breast and guide a medicalgrade steel wire through it.

The wire has a barb at the end that fixes in the tumour , so the surgeon can find it later on.

This is uncomfortable, despite the local anaesthetic, and stressful because, while about 3 to 5cm of the wire is in the breast, the rest sticks out. The patient must sit very still while waiting or transferring between hospitals.

In 2 to 3 per cent of women, the wire moves out of place, so it ’s not an effective guide, and, when you start the surgery , you have to cut through more tissue to find the tumour. The wire will also not necessarily have been threaded through in the most direct route — especially if it was inserted during a mammogram, when the breast is squashed out