Recent advances and perspectives in the application of repeat sentinel lymph node biopsy in breast cancer patients underwent breast-conserving surgery

Abstract

Due to a series of complications associated with traditional axillary lymph node dissection, sentinel lymph node biopsy has now replaced axillary lymph node dissection as the standard axillary staging procedure for patients with negative axillary lymph nodes in both domestic and international clinical practice. With the increased application of breast-conserving surgery and the subsequent increase in the number of patients with ipsilateral breast recurrence after breast-conserving surgery, the appropriate axillary evaluation of such patients has become a new topic of clinical concern, and the application of repeat sentinel lymph node biopsy has become one of the focal points of this topic. It has been shown that repeat sentinel lymph node biopsy is a feasible and safe method for axillary evaluation in patients with ipsilateral breast tumor recurrence after breast-conserving surgery, and that treatment can be adjusted for some patients depending on axillary lymph node status. However, due to the relative lack of studies on the prognostic impact of repeat sentinel lymph node biopsy results and with the development of non-invasive screening techniques, the necessity of repeat sentinel lymph node biopsy in this group of patients remains controversial and needs to be explored in future high-quality prospective trials. This article compiled and summarized the previous literature related to repeat sentinel lymph node biopsy, and focused on its feasibility, safety and clinical application value for clinical reference.

Keywords

• |breast cancer|sentinel lymph node biopsy|repeat sentinel lymph node biopsy