Breast cancer is a malignancy that affects more women in the Brazilian population.Currently the treatment for breast cancer is based on three pillars: radiotherapy, surgery in its various techniques, chemotherapy / hormone therapy.Quality of life may be affected in general, involving the physical, psychological, sociological, emotional, and others.The aim of this study was to compare the upper limb function in patients with breast cancer who underwent sentinel lymph node biopsy with axillary dissection underwent, and were not accompanied by a rehabilitation protocol preestablished.Patients and methods: we evaluated 36 patients who underwent axillary dissection (group DA), 29 who underwent sentinel lymph node biopsy (SNB group) and 11 normal subjects (group SN).Results: We found that the DA group presents a risk of loss of function for flexion and shoulder abduction in the order of 5 and 3.7 times higher than the BLS group, respectively.We also found that patients who underwent SNB evolve with significant dysfunction for flexion and shoulder abduction when not undergoing physiotherapy intervention.Conclusion: The DA has a higher dysfunction in upper limb when compared with BLS.The rehabilitation of patients who underwent SNB can not be ignored because this surgery can lead to significant dysfunction of the ipsilateral upper limb.