Lymph Nodes

Lymph nodes are very important in this topic. They are very small, bean shaped organ that spread out through the body. There function is to act like a filter along the lymph liquid channels that collects dead bacteria and tissues and viruses. In this case, lymph fluids leave the breast and into the bloodstreams; if a person has breast cancer the lymph nodes try to catch these cells and trap them before they go into the rest of the body.

In breast cancer they take those lymph nodes that are located under your arms and are examined. A pathology report is then read, it will tell you how many nodes they examined and how many of them are positive (cancerous). For example if 5 lymph nodes are taken and none of them are cancerous then it would read 0/5, if 3 of them are cancerous it would read 3/5 meaning 5 are removed but 3 are positive (cancerous).