Additional Details

As a part of any operation for breast cancer, the axillary lymph glands are checked to see if breast cancer cells have spread into the lymph glands from the breast tumour. This helps to determine the stage and plan of treatment.Sentinel lymph node biopsy is a way of checking just one or two lymph glands to see if they contain cancer. If sentinel nodes do not contain cancer cells, no further surgery is required. If nodes contain cancer cells, then we proceed to remove all the glands in the axilla. This procedure avoids the morbidity that may follow axillary clearance.