Sentinel lymph node biopsy after neoadjuvant systemic chemotherapy in patients with breast cancer: a prospective pilot trial.

INTRODUCTION The feasibility and accuracy of the sentinel lymph node biopsy for patients who have received neoadjuvant chemotherapy for the treatment of breast cancer is still controversial. MATERIAL AND METHODS Thirty-one consecutive patients with the diagnosis of invasive breast cancer who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy underwent sentinel lymph node biopsy and complete axillary lymph node dissection. RESULTS Sentinel lymph nodes were successfully identified in 26 (83.8%) patients. The node was positive for malignancy in nine (34.6%) patients. Two of the patients with a negative sentinel lymph node presented other positive nodes in the final axillary specimen (false negative rate of 18%). CONCLUSIONS The results obtained by our prospective clinical trial do not support the use of the sentinel lymph node biopsy as an accurate procedure to predict the axillary lymph node status.