1 original scientific paper lib oncol. 2020;48(1):1–7 doi: 10.20471/lo.2020.48.01.01 CLINICAL IMPACT OF SENTINEL LYMPH NODE BIOPSY AFTER NEOADJUVANT TREATMENT IN BREAST CANCER PATIENTS WITH INITIALLY INVOLVED AXILLARY LYMPH NODES; SINGLE-CENTER EXPERIENCE- PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS ana car peterKo 1 , MANUELA AVIROVIĆ 2 , PETRA VALKOVIĆ ZUJIĆ 3 , INGRID BELAC LOVASIĆ 4 and FRANJO LOVASIĆ 1 1 Department of general surgery and surgical oncology, clinical Hospital center rijeka, rijeka, croatia; 2 faculty of Medicine, Department of general pathology and pathologic anatomy, University of rijeka, rijeka, croatia; 3 Department of radiology, clinical Hospital center rijeka, rijeka, croatia; 4 Department of radiotherapy and oncology, clinical Hospital center rijeka, rijeka, croatia Summary introduction: after the consensus conference in st. gallen and updated nccn guidelines, we started doing sentinel lymph node biopsy (slnB) in May 2017, for breast cancer patients who achieve clinical axillary remission following neoad- juvant treatment. this study’s primary goal was to evaluate the clinical impact of slnB after neoadjuvant therapy in the group mentioned above. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed all neoadjuvant breast cancer patients from May 2016 until May 2018 at clinical Hospital center rijeka. our preliminary results recorded the appearance of locoregional and distant recurrence. results: from 65 patients involved in this analysis, 48 patients were node-positive at the time of diagnosis, and 45.83% among those achieved complete pathological axillary remission. After the frst postoperative year, there were no locore- gional relapses nor statistically signifcant diferences in the prevalence of distant recurrences, regardless of the extent of surgical procedure. However, results showed higher rates of locoregional and distant relapse for the group of patients that did not atain complete axillary remission. conclusion: slnB is a reliable alternative to alnD for locoregional and overall disease control for breast cancer pa- tients who achieve complete clinical axillary remission after preoperative systemic treatment. the clinical axillary lymph node status, after neoadjuvant therapy, is a more relevant prognostic factor than the clinical axillary lymph node status at the beginning of the treatment. KeYWorDs: sentinel lymph node biopsy, neoadjuvant treatment, recurrence Corresponding author: Ana Car Peterko, Department of Ge- neral Surgery and Surgical Oncology, Clinical Hospital Center Rijeka, Krešimirova 42, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia. e-mail: ana.car.peterko@uniri.hr INTRODUCTION the idea of sentinel lymph node biopsy is present in literature data from 1951 (1). although trials from the late seventies confrmed that there is no survival beneft from axillary lymph node dissection (alnD) in early-stage breast cancer pa- tients with clinically negative axilla (2), merely at the end of the last century the concept of intraop- erative detection and biopsy of sentinel lymph node was eventually accepted in the breast cancer surgery (3,4). in a short period, sentinel lymph