Introduction: We investigated whether the risk of developing regional lymph node recurrence was dependant on the number of lymph nodes removed.
Object: We followed 2,961 patients of whom 50 (1.69%) developed regional recurrent disease during a median period of 73 months (4-192 months).
Result: For those women who had involved lymph nodes at initial surgery we were able to establish an inverse correlation between the development of local recurrence and the number of lymph nodes removed in multivariate analysis. For women who had no affected lymph nodes, the number of lymph nodes removed did not influence the incidence of local recurrence.
Conclusion: We conclude from these data that women who have negative nodal status at surgical staging do not benefit from further systematic axillary resection with regard to regional lymph node recurrence. For those women, however, who have confirmed axillary metastasis, systematic axillary resection lowers the risk of regional lymph node recurrence depending on the number of lymph nodes removed.