Vane MLG, Moossdorff M, van Maaren MC, et al. - Several trials concerning reducing axillary treatment in cT1-2N0 breast cancer patients have examined regional recurrence (RR), also known as lymph node recurrence, as an endpoint. In this study, the risk of RR was examined as a first event within 5 years after diagnosis in subtypes of breast cancer, conditional to being event-free for 1, 2, 3 and 4 years.From the Netherlands Cancer Registry, they included a total of 18,009 cT1-2N0 (all pN stages) breast cancer patients. Occurrence of RR was identified in 1.3% of cT1-2N0 and 1.5% of pT1-2N+(sn) patients. Observations revealed a low absolute yield of follow-up to detect RR beyond 2 years; one RR can be expected for every 125 event-free patients until 5 years. This suggests a limited value of follow-up longer than 2 years for detecting RR in both clinical and research settings.