Vacuum-assisted breast biopsy: could it play a role in sentinel lymph node biopsy?

摘要

Lymph node status remains mandatory for tumor staging and for the design of further therapy in women with breast cancer. Axillary lym-phadenectomy has traditionally been the gold standard for the evaluation of lymph node status. It is, however, a procedure associated with significant morbidity. Nowadays, sentinel node biopsy has limited the number of unnecessary lymphadenec-tomies.