الفهرس 
Anatomy of the AxillaOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Axillary surgery is a critical part of the treatment of breast carcinoma: its importance is related to the staging of disease, prescription of adjuvant therapy and prognosis. For years, complete axillary dissection has remained the standard approach to breast cancer lymphatic staging; its value is still high, but the development of sentinel-node biopsy has significantly changed the indication of the procedure. We discuss the evolution of axillary surgery in breast cancer. This development has led to a decrease of the percentage of patients with local adverse effects of dissection such as lymphedema and paresthesia which may significantly decrease quality of life and functionality and sometimes cause severe effects such as wound infections, cellulitis and systemic infections. Aim: The aim of this work is to discuss recent updates of management of axilla in cases of breast cancer. The evolution of nodal treatment is paradigmatic of the reduction of surgical aggressiveness that took place over the last century and spared most breast cancer patients the morbidity of extensive lymphadenectomies in favor of a minimally invasive surgery such as SLNB. A further step has been to test the omission of ALND in case of a positive SLNB and the next will be to challenge the usefulness of the SLNB itself.