Dr. Seidman Discusses Less Lymph Node Surgery

Andrew D. Seidman, MD, a professor of medicine at the Weill Cornell Cancer Center and an attending physician at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, discusses less surgery for patients with breast cancer.

American patients and physicians, Seidman says, will be comfortable with less surgery. The idea to do less lymph node surgery, with regard to sentinel lymph node assessment and safety, began with melanoma. American physicians and researchers are fairly far along in terms of understanding and transitioning to the idea that less surgery for the axilla is important.

Initially, only patients with negative sentinel lymph nodes were considered for less surgery due to safety. Currently, physicians are not asking patients with a limited number of lymph nodes to do nothing, they are showing them that there is an alternative to surgery: radiation.