Table 4.

Overall survival, disease-free survival and breast cancer recurrence in the axilla in the studies comparing ALND and aRT

	Overall survival	Disease-free survival	Breast cancer recurrence in the axilla
AMAROS	ALND: 71/744 aRT: 76/681; 5-year: ALND: 93.3 % (95 % CI 91–95); aRT: 92.5 % (95 % CI 90–94.4); HR = 1.17 (95 % CI 0.85–1.62), p = 0.34	ALND: 124/744 aRT: 134/681; 5-year: ALND: 86.9 % (95 % CI 84.1–89.3); aRT: 82.7 % (95 % CI 79.3–85.5); HR = 1.18 (95 % CI 0.93–1.51), p = 0.18	ALND: 4/744 aRT: 7/681; 5-year: ALND: 0.43 % (95 % CI 0–0.92); aRT: 1.19 % (95 % CI 0.31–2.08)	None of the studies reported local, regional, locoregional or distant breast cancer recurrence
OTOASOR	No significant difference, although no overall rates reported	ALND: 94.3 % aRT: 97 %; non-significant	ALND: 0.82 % aRT: 1.3 %; non-significant

The relative effects of treatments on time-to-event outcomes were reported so that HRs less than 1.0 favour the aRT arm and HRs greater than 1.0 favour the ALND arm

ALND axillary lymph node dissection, aRT axillary radiotherapy