The axillary lymph node status is the most important prognostic factor in breast cancer. The axillary node dissection is done are usually performed in infiltrating breast cancer for the information of therapeutic decision and prediction of prognosis. But this procedure results in lymphedema of affected upper extremity nearly about 25%, increased axillary drainage, sensory abnormality and pain. Many researches are focussed to find the patients group who do not need axillary dissection according to the status of tumor size, patient age, hormonal receptor and histologic grade.

We evaluated the axillary lymph node status related with tumor size less than 2 cm in and the correlation of other prognostic factor. We reviewed 127 women with histologically diagnosed infiltrating ductal carcinoma of breast who were treated by one surgeon at YongDong Severance Hospital, Yonsei University College of medicine between 1991 and 1996.

Five patients (3.9%) had T1a lesion (<5 mm), 24 patients (18.9%) had T1b tumors (6-10 mm), and 98 cases (77.2%) had Tic lesion (11-20 mm). The average numbers of dissected axillary lymph nodes were 14.2. We found that small tumor size, good histologic grade, estrogen receptor positivity, old age (over 50 years) showed tendency of decreased axillary node metastasis but without statistical significance.

There are possibility of finding subset with low risk of axillary lymph node metastasis in small size tumor with addition of good prognostic indicators such as good histologic grade, hormonal receptors and old age.