Modulating the extension of axillary lymphadenectomy for early stage breast cancer

Axillary lymph node evaluation remains essential in breast cancer surgery, first as a prognostic factor, because it indicates the degree of dissemination of the disease to the main lymphatic drainage basin of the breast, and, on the other hand, as an element of preventing the local relapse. In the era of the sentinel lymph node, complete axillary lymphadenectomy, considered valuable until recently, but as therapeutic and diagnostic, has become an intervention performed increasingly rare in selected cases. Axillary lymphatic tissue resections are accompanied by morbidity (lymphedema, paresthesia, limitations of arm movement) and symptom magnitude is proportional to the extension of the intervention. For this reason, a solution to avoid these kinds of complications was looked for. Since Gould, in 1960, who mentioned cancer parotid and continuing with Cabanas, Morton, or Veronesi, many surgeons have contributed to the development of safe techniques with which the multidisciplinary team involved in the surgical treatment for breast cancer could perform a safe oncological intervention and at the same time could conserve the healthy tissue, thus limiting morbidity. To achieve this standard, axillary lymphadenectomy has passed through several stages, from over radical interventions that followed the Halsted era, in which, besides axillary lymph nodes, the internal mammary and jugulo-carotidian lymph nodes were excised, to the absence of axillary surgery and replacing it with radiation therapy.