Slovenská chirurgia 1-2/2016
Axillary management in early breast cancer
Management of the axilla in early breast cancer is controversial. There has never been a widely agreed means of balancing an understanding of nodal status as prognostic information, the need to prevent axillary recurrence and the wish to avoid treatment-related morbidity, particularly arm lymphoedema. The routine use of exenteration of axilla (EA) or axillary radiotherapy for the clinically node-negative axila was replaced by the use of sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) to establish nodal status. Since the widespread adoption of SLNB, there have been futher efforts to define the best local treatment for the sentinel node-positive patient (isolated tumour cells, micrometastasis, macrometastasis). These are discussed in the present review.
Keywords: early breast cancer, exenteration of the axilla, sentinel lymph node biopsy, axillary radiotherapy, isolated tumour cells, micrometastasis, macrometastasis
