Value of sentinel lymph node biopsy in breast cancer surgery with simple pathology facilities--an Iranian local experience with a review of potential causes of false negative results.

Introduction: Sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) is a precise procedure for lymphatic staging in early breast cancer. In a valid SLNB procedure, axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) can be omitted in node- negative cases without compromising patient safety. In this study, detection rate, accuracy and false negative rate of SLNB for breast cancer was evaluated in a setting with simple modified conventional pathology facilities without any serial sectioning or immunohistochemistry.