Objectives: It has been made several suggestions in literature concerning with the numbers of lymph node should be examined for patients with nodenegative breast carcinoma. In the present study, we evaluated affect of number of lymph nodes removed on patients’ survival in breast cancer with negative axillary involvement status.

Material and Methods: The medical records of one hundred and thirty consecutive patients with lymph node negative breast cancer who underwent axillary dissection between January 1995 and January 2000 were retrospectively reviewed. The patients were divided into two groups according to the number of lymph node (Group I ≤ 15, Group II > 15) examined. Furthermore, factors affecting survival were analyzed for those patients.

Results: There were fifty-eight patients (44.6%) in Group I and seventy-two patients (55.4%) in Group II. Mean follow-up time was 7.6±1.7 years. Average survival time was 141 months for both groups. In group I and in group II overall survival rates were 89.7% and 97.2%, respectively. Despite overall survival rate was lower than group II, the difference was found not to be statistically significant (p=0.074). Primary tumor size was only factor which was found to be associated with mortality.

Conclusion: We have detected any difference in survival with the harvesting of neither less nor more number of tumor-free axillary lymph nodes than 15, and we believe that performing agressive dissection is not necessary to prevent a misstaging. Furthermore, the mortality risk significantly increases with higher T stage in those cases. ©2007, Firat University, Medical Faculty