[Sentinel nodes in patients with breast cancer].

The aim of this paper is to debate, on the basis of medical literature review, the importance of detection the sentinel nodes in surgery of breast cancer. The beginning of the paper emphasized the problems of the sentinel nodes definition, and then we discuss the dates related to the history and the importance of the sentinel nodes knowledge that consist in the avoidance of axillary lymph nodes dissection in patients with breast cancer N-. Afterwards, we present the indications for detecting the sentinel nodes and the criterion to exclude from the detection of the sentinel nodes.