Welcome to Annals of Breast Surgery

Many patients were aghast when they were diagnosed with breast cancer. Their first usual response was “how much longer I can live”, followed by “I must get the best surgeon to remove the tumor” and “whether there is an optimal treatment that can cure my illness while keeping me pretty”.

Casting our mind back to the history of breast surgery, in 1894, Prof. William S. Halstead in Johns Hopkins Hospital implemented the radical mastectomy named after him. In the 20th century, modified radical mastectomy was in vogue across the world. It is until recent years that breast-conserving surgery, sentinel lymph node biopsy and reconstruction surgery have entered the mainstream. As far as we know, breast cancer is a systemic disease. Even though the concept of multidisciplinary approach to the management of breast cancer is getting more and more prevalent, surgery is still the mainstay of comprehensive treatment. Surgeons and patients both desire to reduce surgical trauma and improve survival rate while taking postoperative quality of life and cosmoses into account.

Since the kickoff of the new century, the treatment of breast cancer has been taking a leap in terms of early screening and diagnosis, surgery and radiotherapy technology, molecular classification, susceptibility gene mutation research, as well as endocrine and targeted therapy drugs. With an eye to establishing a contemporary academic exchange forum for all related areas of breast surgery, Annals of Breast Surgery (ABS) was launched in Sept. 2017 by AME Publishing Company. It is an international, open access, peer-reviewed online journal disseminating current and practical information about the prevention, diagnosis, and clinical investigations of breast surgery. ABS rivets on cutting-edge findings of breast surgery and reconstruction techniques, neoadjuvant therapy, genetic susceptibility and prophylactic mastectomy, including but not limited to, multimodality therapy, biomarkers, imaging, biology, pathology, clinical trial, nursing and technical advances related to breast surgery. ABS is an innovative journal with a distinct format that will make significant contributions to open up new avenues of research on breast cancer and meet the ultimate goal of benefiting the patients.

Acknowledgments

Funding: None.

Footnote

Provenance and Peer Review: This article was commissioned by the editorial office, Annals of Breast Surgery. This article did not undergo external peer review.

Conflicts of Interest: The author has completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form (available at http://dx.doi.org/10.21037/abs.2017.09.01). The author serves as an Editor-in-Chief of Annals of Breast Surgery from Sep 2017 to Aug 2022.

Ethical Statement: The author is accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Open Access Statement: This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits the non-commercial replication and distribution of the article with the strict proviso that no changes or edits are made and the original work is properly cited (including links to both the formal publication through the relevant DOI and the license). See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

Jiong Wu