Lymph node micrometastases do influence breast cancer outcome

In summary, stage IB patients consistently seem to be at significantly greater risk of experiencing disease relapse than stage IA patients when treatment effect is taken into account. As Mittendorf et al1 argue, distinct biologic contexts10 do modulate the benefit of adjuvant therapy. At the same time, though, stage IB consistently remains one of the key, predictive parameters of response from systemic therapy.5 Hence, it correspondingly remains important to rigorously identify patients with stage IB breast cancer to provide them with effective therapeutic procedures.