조기유방암에서 겨드랑이 림프절 수술의 최근 변화

유태경¹^,^*

Updates of Current Evidences in Breast Cancer Axillary Surgery

Tae-Kyung Yoo¹^,^*

¹울산대학교 의과대학 외과학교실

¹Department of Surgery, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea

^*Address for correspondence: Tae-Kyung Yoo, MD, Department of Surgery, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, 88 Olympic-ro 43-gil, Songpa-gu, Seoul 05505, Republic of Korea, Tel: +82-2-3010-1744, Fax: +82-2-474-9027, E-mail: robbie1025@gmail.com

ⓒ Copyright 2026 Korean Society of Lymphology and Lymphedema. This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Received: Oct 19, 2023; Accepted: Nov 09, 2023

Published Online: Nov 09, 2023

Abatract

Over the past decade, axillary surgery in early breast cancer has changed significantly. There has been a paradigm shift of acknowledging the role of axillary surgery as a staging process rather than a therapeutic intervention. Axillary lymph node dissection can be avoided in selected patients with limited metastatic lymph node involvement. Sentinel lymph node biopsy can be performed in patients who have excellent axillary response after neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Omission of axillary surgery could be considered whenever axillary lymph node status would not affect adjuvant treatment plan. Efforts toward de-escalation of axillary surgery continue. Ongoing studies are investigating the role of adjuvant regional radiotherapy in women with positive nodes after neoadjuvant chemotherapy and exploring the oncologic safety of omitting axillary surgery in excellent responders. This reviews the recent advances and new approaches to local therapy of the axilla in breast cancer.

Keywords: Breast Cancer; Axillary Surgery; De-escalation