Lombardi A, Pastore E, Maggi S, et al. - Researchers retrospectively analyzed 1,440 patients undergoing breast conservative surgery to find out a definitive solution for the problem of the free margin as the gold standard nowadays. The estimated rate for positive margins (R1) was 10.2%. At 5 years and at 10 years, the overall survival was 95% and 89%, respectively. R0 and R1 patients did not differ in terms of mortality and local recurrence rate. The variables that showed a significant correlation with R1 status included age, histological size, histological type, grading, multifocality, lympho-vascular invasion, and lymph node status. Age and surgical technique (oncoplastic) were found to be related to R1 status in the multivariate analysis. They concluded that the pre-operative prediction of patients with higher risk of R1 and the selection of patients to be candidates for conservative surgery would be improved with the use of a statistical model that can be developed via further inquiries.