Pathological evaluation of axillary sentinel lymph nodes in breast cancer.

ABSTRACT

Nodal staging is the most important prognostic factor in the management of patients with breast cancer. Sentinel lymph node (SLN) procedure enables selective targeting of the first lymph node that drains the tumor when the initial metastases occur. A negative sentinel node predicts the absence of tumor mestastases in the other regional lymph nodes with high accuracy. Thorough histopathological evaluation of SLNs important for accurate assessment. In this chapter, we discuss the histopathological evaluation of SLNs.