Radiotherapy can be safely omitted for older women with early oestrogen receptor-positive breast cancer treated with breast-conserving surgery and tamoxifen, according to Scottish doctors. 

Their long-term phase III trial involving 1300 women aged 65 and over suggests that while radiotherapy reduces the risk of local recurrence, it does not affect breast-cancer-specific and overall survival. 

After an average nine years’ follow-up, the cumulative incidence of local recurrence was 9.5% among those assigned to no irradiation versus 0.9% in women who received whole-breast irradiation. 

However, overall survival rates were almost identical — about 81% — between the treatment groups, the University of Edinburgh researchers report in The New England Journal of Medicine.