Determinants for non-sentinel node metastases in primary invasive breast cancer: a population-based cohort study of 602 consecutive patients with sentinel node metastases

摘要

BackgroundSentinel node biopsy (SNB) is the standard procedure for axillary staging in patients with clinically lymph node negative invasive breast cancer. Completion axillary lymph node dissection (c-ALND) may not be necessary for all patients as a significant number of patients have no further metastases in non-sentinel nodes (non-SN) and c-ALND may not improve survival. The first aim of our study is to identify clinicopathological determinants associated with non-SN metastases. The second aim is to determine the impact of the number of sentinel node (SN) with macro-metastases and the type of SN metastases on metastatic involvement in non-SN.