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Background
Some authors have stated the undesirability of axillary lymph node dissections for
very small breast cancers, because so few of their patients have lymph node metastases
(3% for T1a lesions in one series).
Methods
Of 6,308 breast cancer cases reviewed from three large urban hospitals 3,077 single
primary cases with both axillary dissection and accurate tumor measurements were statistically
analyzed.
Results
For T1a lesions we found axillary metastases to be four times higher (12%) than others
have reported. For each tumor size there was a statistically significant difference
in the percentage of axillary metastases. There was also a statistically significant
difference in the breast cancer-specific survival of patients with different tumor
sizes (n = 3,077) at the 3-year, 5-year, 7-year, and 10-year periods.
Conclusion
These results justify axillary node dissections even for very small invasive cancers
of the breast, particularly for invasive ductal histology.
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Article info
Footnotes
**Presented at the 48th Annual Meeting of the Southwestern Surgical Congress, Scottsdale, Arizona, April 28–May 1, 1996.
Identification
Copyright
© 1996 Excerpta Medica, Inc. All rights reserved. Published by Elsevier Inc.
