Sentinel Node Biopsy and Axillary Dissection

The extent of axillary dissection has changed over time according to the evolution in understanding breast cancer characteristics. The first complete axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) was described in 1894 by Halsted in his reports on the technique for “radical mastectomy”; in the “Halsted hypothesis”, in which breast cancer was considered a local disease, ALND was intended to be curative [1].