Is the current threshold for staging too high? An audit of radiological staging in patients with a positive sentinel node biopsy against current guidelines

Abstract

Introduction: Radiological staging for distant metastases in early breast cancer is controversial. The ‘Clinical Advice to Cancer Alliances for the Provision of Breast Cancer Services 2017’ guideline advises staging patients with four or more involved axillary lymph nodes (LN) or total tumour size (TTS) >50 mm. This is an audit of patients with primary breast cancer, clinically node-negative at presentation but ≥1 positive sentinel LN (+SLN), who subsequently had metastatic disease on staging, to retrospectively investigate if they met the guidelines for staging.