Background:For patients with breast cancer, axillary dissection was a standard treatment, especially with patient with positive metastases in the sentinel nodes. For some patients axillary dissection might be over-treatment, including those who have had a mastectomy. Especially with the new trend of many radiation-therapy centers, provide radiation-therapy for any number of positive lymph nodes. The aim of our work is to evaluate the impact of number of dissected axillary lymph nodes (LN), on overall survival (OS) and progression free survival (PFS) in breast cancer patients.Methods:This is a retrospective study done in Sohag University hospitals between periods 1/2008 till 12/2014. One hundred and three patients diagnosed with breast cancer were reviewed regarding number of axillary lymph nodes dissected in correlation to progression free survival, overall survival. We divided the patients into two groups according to number of dissected lymph nodes more than 10 LNs (72 patients or less than ten LN (31 patients)). The patients were categorized into N0 (No LN positive), N1 (1-3 LN positive), N2 (3-9LN positive) in both groups, and N3 in first group only as it is more than 10 LN positiveResults:Median PFS for patients having more than 10 LN excised was for N0, N1, N2, N3 5.19, 4.77, 4.14, 3.69 years respectively ,while in the group with less than 10 LN excised PFS was 4.5, 4.14, 4.08 years respectively with no significant difference between both groups P = 0.290. As regard median OS for patients having more than 10 LN excised was for N0, N1, N2, N3 5.57, 5.94, 4.97, 4.61 years respectively while in the other group having less than 10 LN excised OS was 5.4, 5.14,5.14 years respectively with P = 0.117. The incidence of grade 3 and 4 lymphedema was not different between both arms P = 0.913.Conclusions:Axillary lymph nodes management is controversial and needs to be clarified, we tried to evaluate impact of surgical axillary dissection on survival in breast cancer patients. We found no significant OS or PFS differences with higher LN dissection compared with less LN dissection, but this needs further prospective studies.