ObjectiveTo summarize the current situation and progress of sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) in breast cancer. MethodsDomestic and foreign documents related SLNB in breast cancer in recent years were collected to summaize some problems about the definition, indications, biopsy techniques, improvement methods of the detection rate, the pathological examinations of sentinel lymph node (SLN), the types of metastasis, clinical applications of SLNB technology in breast cancer, and so on. ResultsThe indications of SLNB were expanding. The development of the tracer, imaging examination, and pathological detection technology contributed to the status assessment of SLN in breast cancer. The operation method of SLNB in breast cancer had no uniform standards yet. There were many arguments on whether SLNB can guide axillary lymph node dissection, and the detection rate and the false negative rate of it varied widely. ConclusionsSLNB technology has became an important method in the surgical therapy of breast cancer, but the operation still needs to be further standardized. The clinical application of SLNB also needs a lot of prospective multicenter randomized experiments for further demonstration.