Breast cancer patients with a positive sentinel node biopsy are willing to put up with the morbidity from axillary lymph node dissection in order to get better staging information, a small Australian study reveals.

The findings show that patient preferences for axillary dissection should be routinely considered after a positive sentinel node biopsy, even though the procedure has become controversial, the authors write in the Asia-Pacific Journal of Clinical Oncology.

The procedure has rapidly fallen from favour since 2010 when a US randomised controlled trial (Z0011) reported no survival benefit and high rates of morbidity compared with skipping the procedure.

The researchers surveyed 76 women being treated for invasive breast cancer at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne who had undergone axillary node dissection in the past five years after a having a sentinel lymph node biopsy that was positive in 1-2 nodes.