Letter to editor in response to article entitled “The clinical implication of the number of lymph nodes harvested during sentinel lymph node biopsy and its effects on survival outcome in patients with node-negative breast cancer”

摘要

The issue of how many sentinel lymph node(s) [SLNs] should be harvested for correctly predicting the status of axilla has been widely debated and still we don't have a conclusive answer. Initially the studies focused on how to reduce the false negative result of sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB), and attempts were directed to detect all the SLNs and not to miss any of those. To achieve this goal, number of recommendations by different authors were made like use of dual tracer (radioisotope and blue dye) and removal of all hot and/or all blue lymph nodes.