Abstract
Breast cancer is the most common site specific cancer in women. Mastectomy with axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) is the gold standard in determining the prognosis, adjuvant therapy and loco-regional control and improves the survival rate among the node positive group. But, those patients who do not have axillary metastasis may not benefit from ALND instead they may suffer from its complications. Therefore, it may be overtreatment to perform ALND in this subgroup of patients. This study was done to find out the predictors of axillary lymph node metastases in early breast cancer which will help in selecting patients in whom ALND can be avoided. 81 early breast cancer patients who were operated between January 2010 to March 2017 were included in this study. 25 patients (30.9%) showed axillary metastasis. On statistical analysis, tumor size (p=0.045), hormonal status (p=0.023) and histological type of the tumor (p=0.038) were found to be significant. Whereas Other variables like age of the patient, histological grading of the tumor, side of the breast involved, lymphovascular invasion and perineural spread were not found to be associated with axillary lymph node metastasis in early breast cancer.In conclusion, we have found that size of the tumor, hormonal status and histological type of the tumor can predict the axillary metastasis in early breast cancer which can be taken into consideration before going for ALND in node negative patients.
Keywords: Breast cancer, axillary lymph node dissection (ALND), histopathological type, lymphovascular invasion, perineural spread, immunohistochemistry
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Corresponding Author
Verma Nityanand
Post-graduate trainees, Department of Surgery, Regional Institute of Medical Sciences,
Imphal, Manipur, India
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.18535/jmscr/v5i11.157
