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INTRODUCTION The objective of our study was to evaluate the risk of cancer after prophylactic nipple-sparing mastectomy (PNSM). MATERIAL AND METHODS The PubMed database was consulted using the following key-words: "nipple-sparing mastectomy", "prophylactic", "locoregional recurrence", "oncological risk". Articles published between January 1995 and December 2016 were searched. RESULTS Out of the 270 articles found, 19 were included. Overall, 15 studies were retrospective, 2 prospective, 2 prospective and retrospective and 3 were multicentric. All told, they involved 3890 patients corresponding to 6786 mastectomies, among which the total number of prophylactic nipple-sparing mastectomies was 3716. Average age of the patients was 44.4years and average follow-up was 38.4months (8-168months); 29.4% of them had a BRCA 1 or 2 mutation; 85 and 15% underwent prosthetic and autologous reconstructions, respectively. Average cancer rates exterior to and within the nipple areolar complex (NAC) were 0.2 and 0.004%, respectively. The overall average rate of histological pre-malignant lesions in the nipple areolar complex was 1.5%. The overall complication rate was 20.5%, and necrosis rates of the nipple areolar complex and the skin were 8.1 and 7.1%, respectively. CONCLUSION In prophylactic breast surgery, conservation of the nipple areolar complex does not seem to increase the risk of cancer development. However, short follow-up time and the different methodologies applied in the different studies presently preclude generalization of the technique.