Axillary lymph node status is an extremely important prognostic factor in the assessment and treatment evaluation of patients with newly diagnosed breast cancer. Historically, axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) has been the reference standard for diagnosis and staging. However, this procedure can cause numerous postoperative problems, such as lymphedema , pain, impaired shoulder mobility and arm weakness. Furthermore, in this era of mammographic screening, axillary lymph node dissection yields negative results in 80%-85% of patients with T1 cancer.
Therefore, in recent years, sentinel lymph node biopsy (SNB) has replaced axillary dissection for lymph node staging at major medical centers. However, there are some practical issues to be resolved. For example, radiotracer distribution can be slow or faulty, valuable operating room time is expended, and pathologists must make quick decisions based on the analysis of frozen sections or there is the need to undergo two surgical interventions (i.e., removal of primary tumor and SNB, and in a next step completion ALND). If nodal positivity could be proven and documented preoperatively, sentinel lymph node biopsy could be bypassed and a decision will be made to perform axillary dissection, which is the standard of care in most node-positive patients.
