To tell you the truth, I never understood what this meant either. I
just remember a diagram from medical school days which showed sample
incisions "along skin lines" on the breast. The lines went in the
direction: chest wall towards nipple. Thus a circumferential incision
(even a very short one) is not along skin lines.
If this is wrong due to my ever increasingly failing memory, the idea
was *not* to make circumferential incisions, even partial
circumferential incisions.
Jack Newman, MD, FRCPC