ABSTRACT
The surgical treatment of breast cancer over the last fifty years has become increasingly conservative, and a series of landmark clinical trials support this conservatism.1-4 As a result, radical mastectomy is no longer the “gold standard,” internal mammary node dissection has been abandoned, and breast-conservation therapy has proved to be feasible and safe for an increasing proportion of patients. Throughout this period, axillary lymph-node dissection (ALND) has remained the standard of care.
