Neo‐adjuvant chemotherapy and axillary de‐escalation management for patients with clinically node‐negative breast cancer

This study aimed to explore the optimal time of sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) and neo‐adjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) and to assess the feasibility of selective elimination of axillary surgery after NAC in clinically node‐negative (cN0) patients. From April 2010 to August 2018, 845 patients undergoing surgery after NAC were included in this retrospective study to analyze the correlation between different clinicopathological characteristics of cN0 patients and negative axillary lymph node after NAC (ypN0). Among the 148 cN0 patients, 83.1% (123/148) were ypN0. The rates of ypN0 in patients with hormone receptor positive (HR+)/HER2−, HR+/HER2+, HR−/HER2+, and triple‐negative (TN) breast cancer were 75.4% (46/61), 82.6% (19/23), 85.2% (23/27), and 94.6% (35/37), respectively (P