Objective To compare the prognosis of sentinel node-positive breast cancer patients forgoing axillary lymph node dissection.Methods A systematic literature search (Medline,Embase,Cochrane Library)ended in April 2014 was performed to identify all eligible articles.Two reviewers independently screened and extracted data.RevMan5 was used for statistical analysis.Results A total of 1026 abstracts were retrieved and 18 clinical controlled studies finally included,the total number of patients were 47 894,7389 had micrometastases in sentinel lymph node,35 217 had macrometastases in sentinel lymph node and 5288 had positive sentinel lymph node regardless of micrometastases or macrometastases.For patients with MIC,the 5-year axillary recurrence rate,5-year disease free survival and 5-year overall survival had no significant difference between patients who only received sentinel lymph node biopsy and patients who received further axillary lymph node dissection,(OR =1.78;95％ CI:0.72-4.39,P=0.21),(OR =0.76,95％CI:0.56-1.04,P=0.08),(OR=0.77,95％CI:0.43-1.40,P=0.39).For patients with MAC,the 5-year axillary recurrence rate had no significant difference between patients who only received sentinel lymph node biopsy and patients who received further axillary lymph node dissection,(OR =1.21;95％ CI:O.76-1.91,P =0.42).For patients with positive sentinel lymph node regardless of micrometastases or macrometastases,the 5-year axillary recurrence rate and 5-year overall survival had no significant difference between patients who only received sentinel lymph node biopsy and patients who received further axillary lymph node dissection,(OR =1.29;95％ CI:0.92-1.80,P =0.14),(OR =0.96,95％ CI:0.64-1.45,P =0.84).Conclusions Among patients with limited positive SLN of breast cancer,patients forgoing ALND compared with ALND did not have obvious affect on long-term survival.