Abstract
Opportunities for surgical treatment for breast cancer are limited, and sentinel lymph node biopsy (SNB) has been adopted as a standard treatment for axillary lymph node metastasis. Omission of axillary dissection is the recommended standard practice in the absence of sentinel lymph node metastasis. In recent years, clinical studies on the omission of axillary dissection was conducted on patients showing sentinel lymph node metastasis, and comparison studies between axillary dissection and non-dissection groups have proved that both the recurrence and survival rates of axillary lymph nodes were equal. Thus, based on this appropriate standard, the omission of dissection of axillary lymph nodes can be considered. In the past, dissection of axillary lymph nodes was the standard treatment for patients who received preoperative chemotherapy ; however, approximately 90% of identification rates of sentinel lymph node and approximately 10% of false-negative rates of SNB were reported. Axillary dissection can now be omitted with utmost care for patients having clinically negative results for sentinel lymph node metastasis (N0) before preoperative chemotherapy. However, for patients with positive results for lymph node metastasis (N+) before preoperative chemotherapy, the false-negative rates of SNB are so high that axillary dissection is still regarded as the standard treatment.
