Axillary lymph node dissection (ALND), although increasingly less necessary, is still required in specific breast cancer surgery scenarios, such as cases with a high axillary tumor burden. However, traditional practices are being reassessed due to the associated morbidity and impacts on recovery. This review explores five critical and controversial innovations in ALND: (1) same-day discharge, (2) omission of surgical drains, (3) application of fibrin sealants, (4) minimally invasive techniques, and (5) their collective influence on quality of life (QoL). Same-day discharge has proven to be safe and cost-effective, increasing patient satisfaction without raising complication rates. The omission of drains, while slightly increasing seroma volumes, is linked to shorter hospital stays and fewer complications. The use of fibrin sealants shows promising results in reducing the seroma volume and duration, expediting recovery, although their routine use remains under debate. Minimally invasive and endoscopic techniques reduce morbidity and improve cosmetic outcomes while maintaining oncological safety. Quality of life (QoL) is essential in the evaluation of breast cancer treatment and is evaluated using tools such as EORTC QLQ-C30, QLQ-BR23, and FACT-B, SF-36, which assess physical, emotional, and psychosocial recovery. Innovations in ALND seem to improve QoL by minimizing pain, increasing arm function, and reducing psychological stress, underscoring the importance of patient-centered strategies. Although axillary lymphadenectomy increases arm morbidity compared to sentinel node biopsy, its overall impact on quality of life appears limited, likely due to the overlapping effects of systemic therapies and breast surgery.

Axillary lymph node dissection (ALND), although increasingly less necessary, is still required in specific breast cancer surgery scenarios, such as cases with a high axillary tumor burden. However, traditional practices are being reassessed due to associated morbidity and impacts on recovery. This review explores five critical and controversial innovations in ALND: (1) same-day discharge, (2) omission of surgical drains, (3) application of fibrin sealants, (4) minimally invasive techniques, and (5) their collective influence on quality of life (QoL). Same-day discharge has proven to be safe and cost-effective, increasing patient satisfaction with-out raising complication rates. Omission of drains, while slightly increasing seroma volumes, is linked to shorter hospital stays and fewer complications. The use of fibrin sealants shows promising results in reducing seroma volume and duration, expediting recovery, although their routine use remains under debate. Minimally invasive and endoscopic techniques reduce morbidity and improve cosmetic outcomes while maintaining oncological safety. Quality of life (QoL), is essential in the evaluation of breast cancer treatment, it is evaluated using tools such as EORTC QLQ-C30, QLQ-BR23, FACT-B, SF-36, which assess physical, emotional, and psychosocial recovery. Innovations in ALND seem to improve QoL by minimizing pain, increasing arm function, and reducing psychological stress, underscoring the importance of patient-centered strategies. Although axillary lymphadenectomy increases arm morbidity compared to sentinel node biopsy, its overall impact on quality of life appears limited, likely due to the overlapping effects of systemic therapies and breast surgery.

Background. The standard of care for patients (pts) with an ipsilateral breast tumour recurrence (IBTR) after breast conserving therapy (BCT) is a salvage mastectomy. However there is no solid data providing a clear advantage of radical surgery for IBTR in terms of the outcome for patients with isolated local recurrence after BCT. Nevertheless, there is a growing interest in the feasibility of repeating BCT for these patients (pts). We analyzed the oncological outcomes of repeated breast-conserving therapy (rBCT) related to the immunohistochemical subtype. Materials and methods. Between 2014 and 2020, 35 pts were selected for a 2nd BCT, a new lumpectomy with accelerated partial breast re-irradiation (APBrI), and prospectively followed in three university hospitals in Barcelona. Inclusion criteria were pts older than 50y with a late (> 48m from primary treatment) isolated IBTR less than 2cm, without having primary major radiotherapy toxicity. Oncological outcomes were analyzed. Results. At IBTR, median age was 65y and median time to ITBR was 154m. Patients characteristics are shown in table 1. Tumor’s recurrence was DCIS in 5 pts (14.3%) and invasive carcinoma in 30 pts (85.7%), where Luminal A in 10 pts (33.3%), Luminal B-HER2 negative in 12 pts (40%), Luminal B-HER2 positive in 2 (6.7%), non-Luminal HER2 positive in 3 (10%) and triple negative in 3 (10%). With a median follow-up of 37 months, there were 4 relapses (11.4%), one was a 2nd IBTR (2.85%) after in-situ IBTR, and 3 were metastatic recurrences (8.6%), two after invasive and one after in-situ IBTR. Both metastatic progressions after invasive IBTR, were hormone receptor positive and HER2 negative (Luminal B). There were 2 deaths not related with breast cancer. The 2nd IBTR rate was 2.85%. Five-year regional-free survival, metastasis-free survival, and overall survival was 82.4% (95% IC 52.6 - 94.4 %), %, 84.6% (95% IC 51 - 96 %) and 93.3% (95% IC 61.2 - 99%), respectively. Conclusion. Conservative treatment with breast conserving surgery and APBrI for isolated IBTR after BCT seems like a feasible technique as an alternative to mastectomy in selected patients. Second local recurrences and overall survival are similar to the rates described for salvage mastectomy for isolated ipsilateral breast tumour recurrence. In this cohort of patients, the immunohistochemical subtype tumors with poor prognosis (HER2 positive and triple negative) did not show increase in the local recurrence rate. Citation Format: Martin Espinosa-Bravo, Victoria Reyes Lopez, Clara Morales Comas, Joaquín Rivero Déniz, Javier de La Torre Fernández de Vega, Irene Vives Roselló, Christian Sisó Raber, Manuel Altabas Gonzalez, Alexandra Giraldo Marin, Inma Alonso, Nuria Argudo, Pau Nicolau, Manel Algara, Xavier Sanz, Xavier Caparrós, Gabriela Oses, Jordi Saez, María Vernet-Tomas, Meritxell Mollà. Safety of conservative surgery with accelerated partial breast re-irradiation for isolated ipsilateral breast cancer recurrence regardless of immunohistochemical subtype. A multicentric prospective study [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2021 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2021 Dec 7-10; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2022;82(4 Suppl):Abstract nr PD7-09.