Is just my opinion/how i do things, but growth hormones being produced in apex nodes shouldnt really inform your decision on how you prune the plant, that should be entirely informed by space concerns, and the way the plant wants to grow contrasted with the way you want it to grow lol. You cannot prune a plant without removing apex nodes, that isnt even possible lol. You can defoliate without removing apex nodes, but you cant prune. And if you do prune away apex nodes, by the next afternoon the plant will have chosen 1, sometimes 2 to replace them, and youll actually end up with a larger plant with more surface area more quickly by increasing your count of apex nodes closer to the root system.
But yea, dont leave no main stem sticks jutting out between new shoots if you top. asking for troubles. Ive dont that many times from lazyness and had no issues at all, but if that stem is hollow, you are asking for big troubles. If you can avoid it, you dont ever want to prune back below where the stem has hardened. It no longer has a spongey inner pith, and its hollow at that point. If you grab a plants stem and flex it, you can feel where the pith stops, and the stem goes totally hollow and rigid. It's different on every plant, and its even different with different feeding regiments on the same plant. Usually top 6 inches of a branch is pretty soft on a large plant, on smaller plants sometimes you only get a few inches of spongey pith below the apex.
I just cut my mystery sativa back recently, from a nbearly 5 foot bush to a tiny little thing. Cut large hollow main stems, removed probably 3/4 of the plant. As of now its coming back hard and heavy, and will still probably finish bigger then some of my other plants. I left big hollow sticks jutting out between the shoots in several places, and im not worried one bit about that, tbh. Ive taped split stalks back together after cleaning slugs and ants out of the split then a couple spritzes of h202, and the plant seemed like it barely even noticed. Once mature these things are some of the hardiest, most adaptable plants ive ever tinkered with honestly. They dont even flinch or wilt when things happen that would kill many of my other species of plants, to be fair.