Doctor's keyhole surgery to beat breast cancer

A London breast cancer surgeon is preparing to carry out the first keyhole mastectomy in Britain.

Women treated by Mo Keshtgar will have their breast removed through the side of the nipple and immediat e ly replaced by an implant that is then inflated.

It means some sufferers of cancer will never be without their "own" breasts and that scarring will be dramatically reduced.

Mr Keshtgar said today: "I am hopeful. No one has done this particular technique in the UK as yet but there are women who could really benefit."

Mastectomies have traditionally involved the removal of the entire breast. But some women want to keep the skin around their breasts so that implants can be inserted later and they will look more natural.

Currently this involves an operation to cut through the underside of the breast, leaving scarring around the base. The new operation will leave only a small incision around the nipple and the armpit.

Hundreds of women have undergone the operation in Japan but it has never been performed in this country.

However, experts warned the technique has not been clinically proven to have advantages.

Mr Keshtgar, who has just begun his work at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, plans to carry out the first operation before the end of the year.

The specialist, who trained in Japan, said: "There are different challenges, with women from so many different ethnicities with different size and texture of breasts."

The keyhole mastectomy is just one of four revolutionary treatments Mr Keshtgar is developing for breast cancer. He is also running trials of a new technique to deliver radiotherapy to patients undergoing operations to remove a cancerous breast lump.

At the moment, women undergoing the procedure have to go through up to six weeks of daily radiotherapy afterwards.

Under Mr Keshtgar's new procedure, a high-level Intrabeam machine developed in Germany delivers a blast of therapy on to the base of the cancer while the patient is still under anaesthetic. But the procedure may not become routine at the Royal Free as the hospital does not yet own the Intrabeam machine. The £300,000 device is on loan from the manufacturer.

Mr Keshtgar's other major developments include scanning women's lymph nodes using white light to establish if any are cancerous and inserting a camera through the nipple to find cancer in the breast lining.