Long-term outcome in patients with nodal-positive breast cancer treated with sentinel lymph node biopsy alone after neoadjuvant chemotherapy

Purpose Sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) has yet to be accepted as the standard staging procedure in node positive (cN1) breast cancer patients who had clinical complete response in the axilla (cN0) following neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC), due to the presumed high false negative rate associated with SLNB in such scenario. This study aimed to determine whether there is a significant difference in the axillary recurrence rate (ARR) and long-term survival in this group of patients, receiving SLNB alone versus axillary lymph node dissection (ALND). Methods A retrospective cohort of cN1 patients who were rendered cN0 by NAC from January 2014 to December 2018 were identified from the Asan Medical Center database. Patients’ characteristics and outcomes were collected and analyzed. Results 902 cN1 patients treated with NAC and turned cN0 were identified. 477 (52.9%) patients achieved complete pathological response in the axilla (ypN0). At a median follow up of 65 months, ARR was 3.2% in the SLNB only group and 1.8% in the ALND group ( p = 0.398). DFS and OS were significantly worse in patients with ALND as compared to patients with SLNB only ( p = 0.011 and 0.047, respectively). We noted more patients in the ALND group had T3–4 tumor. In the subgroup analysis, we showed that in the T1–2 subgroup ( n = 377), there was no statistically significant difference in DFS and OS ( p = 0.242 and 0.671, respectively) between SLNB only and ALND group. Conclusion Our findings suggest that cN1 patients who were converted to ypN0 following NAC may be safely treated with SLNB only.