Cosmesis
telangiectasia, breast cancer
DISEASE, BREAST CANCER
Cosmetic assessment was from three perspectives: the treating clinician, via independent consensus using photographs and the patient.The treating clinician assessed cosmesis following wide local excision (WLE) and telangiectasia following mastectomy or WLE. Both were assessed at the end of adjuvant treatment and at 1, 2 and 5 years post-surgery and categorised on a four-point scale from poor to excellent [For the independent assessment after WLE or mastectomy, photographs were taken at baseline, 1, 2 and 5 years post-surgery. As implemented in the Standardisation of Radiotherapy (START) trial that was run in parallel to SECRAB [Although an indirect measure, importantly, the patient's own assessment was also analysed at baseline and at each patient's final assessment (either 1, 2 or 5 years after surgery, whichever was their last available time point) using their responses to specific QoL-related questions from the EORTC QLQ-BR23 questionnaire: Question 9 – Have you felt physically less attractive as a result if your disease or treatment?; Question 10 – Have you been feeling less feminine as a result of your breast cancer treatment?; Question 11 – Did you find it difficult to look at yourself naked?; and Question 12 – Have you been dissatisfied with your body?.Centres that participated in the cosmesis sub-study are listed in 