A total of 70/160 randomly selected patients fulfilled the inclusion criteria.
In total, 28/70 patients were positive for axillary nodal metastases. A total 15/28 patients underwent FNAC/core biopsy and 11 were positive. In the remaining 13 patients, nodal metastases were detected by sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) in 10 patients and initial axillary node clearance (ANC) in three patients. These 13 patients had a probability range of 26 to 91% (mean 59%). The overall probability range in all 28 patients is 6 to 97% (mean 64%). Forty-two patients did not have lymph node metastases. One patient did not have axillary US assessment. In total, 10/41 patients had abnormal nodes on US that were negative on FNAC/core biopsy. All 42 patients had surgical lymph node assessment (38 had SLNB, four had ANC). The overall probability range is 9 to 80% (mean 36%).