Abstract: Axillary lymph node status is one of the most important prognostic factors for the patients with breast cancer. Physical examination combining with ultrasound, mammography, CT, MRI and PETCT can improve the predictive efficiency, but there is still high false negative rate. Ultrasoundguided fineneedle aspiration for axillary lymph node can improve preoperative diagnostic rate effectively. Using mathematical and statistical methods, building models for predicting sentinel lymph node or nonsentinel lymph node status with clinicopathological features helps to calculate the risk of lymph node involvement. Whether screening out patients with low risk of lymph node involvement avoiding axillary surgery is safe or not is still to be evaluated by relevant clinical trials.

Key words: Breast neoplasms, Lymph nodes, Neoplasms metastasis, Forecasting