title: Axillary recurrence rate in breast cancer patients with negative sentinel lymph node biopsy or containing micrometastases and without further lymphadenectomy: a monocentric review of 8 years and 481 cases.
abstract: Sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) has almost completely replaced complete axillary lymph node dissection (CALND) as the first-line axillary procedure for clinically node-negative early stage breast cancer. We assessed the incidence of axillary relapse in patients with negative SLNB who had no additional CALND (group 1, n = 481) and in patients whose SLNB contained micrometastases and had no further CALND (group 2, n = 45). All patients were operated on between November 1997 and December 2005 and followed at the Jules Bordet Institute. The median follow-up was 48 months. A mean of 2.2 sentinel lymph nodes was removed per patient. Axillary relapse was observed in only one patient (0.2%) in group 1 and in none of the patients in group 2. This study confirms that the axillary recurrence rate after long-term follow-up of patients with a negative sentinel lymph node is very rare, provided that the selection criteria are judicious.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mammo-Pelvic Surgery, Bordet Institute, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Arnaud
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Toussaint
authors.forename: Jean-Marie
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Nogaret
authors.forename: Isabelle
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Veys
authors.forename: Dina
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hertens
authors.forename: Danielle
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Noterman
authors.forename: Filip
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: De Neubourg
authors.forename: Denis
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Larsimont
authors.forename: Pierre
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Bourgeois
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001365:Axilla; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology* / Q000601:surgery; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008197:Lymph Node Excision; D008207:Lymphatic Metastasis; D008875:Middle Aged; D009364:Neoplasm Recurrence, Local / Q000453:epidemiology*; D021701:Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy