[Surgical axilla dissection. Technical standard or obsolete method?].

Axillary lymph node status remains the single most important prognostic parameter and has crucial therapeutic implications in patients with breast carcinoma. Surgical dissection of the axilla is commonly regarded as the standard procedure of axillary staging, its sensitivity and specificity being 99% and 100%, respectively. Apart from giving reliable information on the individual prognosis axillary dissection also contributes to efficient local tumor control in the axilla, as it reduces the risk of local recurrence to less than 1.4% if more than 10 lymph nodes are removed. Alternative, less or non-invasive axillary staging methods have either not yet been sufficiently standardized (immunoscintigraphy, PET-scan, prediction of axillary lymph node status by means of individual risk factors) or are associated with a considerable risk of false-negative staging (up to 50% of patients with positive axillary lymph nodes are not detected by palpation alone, ultrasonography or CT-scan). The basic principles of axillary sampling and axilloscopic dissection are questionable because the number of lymph nodes removed during these procedures is commonly less than 10. With its sensitivity/specificity being comparable to that of standard axillary dissection sentinel lymph node biopsy represents a highly promising approach which will in the future potentially lead to significant optimization of the clinical management of patients with breast cancer, especially those diagnosed in early stages (T1 a, T1 b and T1 c).