BACKGROUND: Symptomatic breast cancers may be more aggressive as compared to screen-detected breast cancers. This could favor axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) in patients with symptomatic breast cancer and positive sentinel nodes.

METHOD: We identified 955 patients registered in the Danish Breast Cancer Cooperative Group (DBCG) Database in 2008 - 2010 with micrometastases (773) or isolated tumor cells (ITC) (182) in the sentinel node. Patients were cross-checked in the Danish Quality Database of Mammography Screening and 481 patients were identified as screen-detected cancers. The remaining 474 patients were considered as having symptomatic cancers. Multivariate analyses of the risk of non-sentinel node metastases were performed including known risk factors for non-sentinel node metastases as well as method of detection.

RESULTS: 18% of the patients had metastases in non-sentinel nodes. This was evenly distributed between patients with symptomatic and screen-detected cancers; 18.5% vs 17.5% (OR 1.07; 95% CI 0.77-1.49; p = 0.69). In patients with micrometastases 21% had non-sentinel node metastases in the group with symptomatic cancers compared to 19% of patients with screen-detected cancers. This difference was not significant (OR 1.16; 95% CI 0.81-1.65, p = 0.43). Neither the multivariate analysis showed an increased risk of non-sentinel node metastases in patients with symptomatic cancers compared to screen-detected cancers (OR 1.12, CI 0.77-1.62, p = 0.55). In patients with ITCs 8% of patients with symptomatic cancers had non-sentinel node metastases compared to 13% of patients with screen-detected cancers. This difference was not significant (OR 0.58; 95% CI 0.22-1.54, p = 0.27). In the multivariate analysis, the risk of non-sentinel node metastases was still not significantly increased in patients with symptomatic cancers compared to screen-detected cancers (OR 0.45; 95% CI 0.16-1.27, p = 0.13).

CONCLUSION: We did not find any clinically relevant difference in the risk of non-sentinel node metastases between patients with symptomatic and screen-detected cancers with micrometastases or ITC in the sentinel node.