Axillary recurrences after sentinel lymph node biopsy in initial breast cancer

Nine years of Experience with the Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy in a Single Italian Center: A Retrospective Analysis of 1,050 Cases

“…Among women who did not undergo CALND after SLNB, axillary recurrence prevalence was 1% (6/805), which is in accordance with results of most studies evaluating the choice of CALND after SLNB [3–14]. After the 6th year of follow‐up, axillary recurrence prevalence was apparent, at a rate of 1.7% (95% CI 0.2–3.1%).…”

“…In addition, we performed a Medline search of the last 5 years of English-language articles about the prevalence of axillary recurrences after negative SLNB, and we found ten studies [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12].…”

“…The main advantages of SLNB are the low associated morbidity, which is closely related to the surgeon's experience, and its good accuracy in predicting the axillary nodal stage [2], which is reinforced by the low axillary recurrence rate after negative SLNB, which most studies report at lower than 1% [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Nevertheless, both the efficacy and the safety of the SLNB procedure have been widely investigated, with the result that its local control of disease is comparable with that of CALND [12,[16][17][18].…”