Impact of the Number of Dissected Axillary Lymph Nodes on Survival in Breast Cancer Patients

e12593Background: For patients with breast cancer, axillary dissection was a standard treatment, especially with patient with positive metastases in the sentinel nodes. For some patients axillary dissection might be over-treatment, including those who have had a mastectomy. Especially with the new trend of many radiation-therapy centers, provide radiation-therapy for any number of positive lymph nodes. The aim of our work is to evaluate the impact of number of dissected axillary lymph nodes (LN), on overall survival (OS) and progression free survival (PFS) in breast cancer patients. Methods: This is a retrospective study done in Sohag University hospitals between periods 1/2008 till 12/2014. One hundred and three patients diagnosed with breast cancer were reviewed regarding number of axillary lymph nodes dissected in correlation to progression free survival, overall survival. We divided the patients into two groups according to number of dissected lymph nodes more than 10 LNs (72 patients or less than ten...