Fundamentos de la biopsia del ganglio centinela en el cáncer de mama

Abstract

Axillary lymph node dissection is the gold standard for detecting axillary disease in breast cancer. Node status remains the most important prognostic factor, and is an important information to make decisions over further treatment. However, both the morbidity associated to this technique, and the fact that, due to mammografic screening, most of the cancer cases nowadays are early cancers that have no axillary metastases, have encouraged investigations towards new surgical approaches. Sentinel node biopsy has been recognized to detect any axillary disease with minimal morbidity and false-negative rates. This technique is routinely indicated for tumors below 3 cm in size, without clinical axillary disease.