Part B Insider (Multispecialty) Coding Alert

"We chose 50 as the age cutoff because the incidence of intraductal spread of cancer decreases over the age of 50, thus reducing the chances that residual cancer will be left behind after lumpectomy," explains Dallas, TX physician Peter Beitsch, who chaired the ad-hoc committee that drafted the ASBS statement.

So far, the indications for APBI are good, says Pat Whitworth, chair of the ASBS research committee. Many breast doctors already have started using APBI for their patients. But no randomized trials have yet compared outcomes for APBI and WB-EBRT, he notes.