American journal of clinical oncology
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Am. J. Clin. Oncol. · Feb 2013
Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study Comparative StudyComparison of lymphedema in patients with axillary lymph node dissections to those with sentinel lymph node biopsy followed by immediate and delayed ALND.
The purpose of the study was to show that delayed axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) has higher rates of lymphedema compared with immediate ALND, using data from NSABP-B32 at Beaumont Hospital. ⋯ The rate of lymphedema was higher in delayed ALND but not statistically significant. Comparison, however, is difficult, given the limited sample size. We urge the other centers of NSABP-B32 to validate this, by contacting the node-positive patients for measurements. The lymphedema rate for SLNB alone was 0% and approached statistical significance when compared with node-negative ALND.