Abstract: Objective To evaluate the accuracy of intraoperative imprint cytology on rapid diagnosis of sentinel lymph node metastases in breast cancer. Methods Sentinel lymph node biopsy was performed in 70 selected patients with early-stage breast cancer. All the sentinel lymph nodes were sent to the Department of Pathology in 10 minutes and cut into pieces along the short axis every 2-3 millimeters. Imprint slides were made of each pieces of the sentinel lymph nodes， and then stained with HE. Finally，the node pieces were handled by histological specimen procedure. Intraoperative imprint cytology results were compared with the final paraffin HE pathology. Results In this study, 134 sentinel lymph nodes were identified. The sensitivity， specificity， accuracy， positive predictive value and negative predictive value of intraoperative imprint cytology for 134 sentinel nodes were 96.2％（25／26）， 98.1％（106／108）， 97.8（131／134）， 92.6％（25／27）and 99.1％（106／107）， respectively. The cause of false positive of imprint cytology was that confusing morphological similarities existed between histiocytes and high-differentiated cancer cells. And the factor that results in false negative was mainly the limited quantity of metastasizing cells. Conclusion Imprint cytology is a simple， effective and rapid method for intraoperative pathological evaluation of sentinel lymph node for early breast cancer patients，which has a high concordance with the paraffin results， and can provide accurate and rapid diagnostic information for the surgeons during operation.