Invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC) presents special challenges to treating physicians because of the diffuse infiltrative growth pattern. As sentinel lymph node dissection (SLND) is rapidly replacing axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) in the management of patients with early-stage breast cancer, we sought to evaluate the safety of SLND in providing axillary control in breast cancer patients with lobular histology and a negative sentinel node.

We identified 239 patients with T1-2,N0,M0 lobular breast cancer from the prospective databases of 2 institutions; all were treated between March 1994 and December 2003.

A total of 202 patients had SLND and 37 had SLND followed by ALND. There was no significant difference between the 2 groups with respect to tumor size, presence of lymphovascular invasion, estrogen receptor (ER)/progesterone receptor (PR) and HER-2/neu status, type of breast surgery, margin status, or nuclear grade. Use of chemotherapy, radiation, and hormonal therapy was not significantly different between groups. At a median follow-up of 48 months in the ALND group and 26 months in the SLND group (range 6 to 80 months), none of the 202 patients in the SLND group had experienced an axillary recurrence, while 2 (5.4%) of the 37 patients who underwent ALND had experienced an axillary recurrence.

SLND provided axillary control equivalent to that of ALND for patients with lobular breast cancer. SLND alone appears to be adequate axillary management of patients with lobular breast cancer and a negative sentinel node.