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Axillary clearance

Last reviewed dd mmm yyyy. Last edited dd mmm yyyy

Authoring team

Axillary lymph node clearance entails complete removal of all lymph nodes as opposed to the selective sampling of a few. It has the advantages of:

  • more thorough staging of axillary metastasis than sampling alone
  • theoretically less risk of local recurrence within axilla

However, it has a number of negative aspects:

  • up to half of all patients treated with axillary clearance have no evidence of axillary disease; this group have had an unnecessary procedure with its associated morbidity
  • there is increased morbidity relative to sampling alone, for example, nerve damage and lymphoedema; for this reason, nodal clearance should not be combined with radiotherapy

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