European journal of surgical oncology : the journal of the European Society of Surgical Oncology and the British Association of Surgical Oncology
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Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study
Impact of axillary dissection in women with invasive breast cancer who do not fit the Z0011 ACOSOG trial because of three or more metastatic sentinel lymph nodes.
The objective of this study was to determine the effects of axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) versus sentinel lymph node biopsy alone (SLNB) on the survival of patients with 3 or more metastatic lymph nodes (MLN) in invasive breast cancer. ⋯ In conclusion, patients with a T1-T2 invasive breast cancer and at least 3 MLN do not benefit from ALND after SLNB for specific and overall survival, thus limiting ALND to a staging procedure. A subgroup of patients with 3 MLN had a better SS with ALND, possibly due to an under-staging of the SLNB-alone group.