Occult metastases in the sentinel lymph nodes of patients with early stage breast carcinoma : A preliminary study

✍ Scribed by Kambiz Dowlatshahi; Ming Fan; Kenneth J. Bloom; Daniel J. Spitz; Samir Patel; Howard C. Snider Jr.

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 398 KB
• Volume: 86
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0008-543X
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-0142(19990915)86:6<990::aid-cncr14>3.0.co;2-d

✦ Synopsis

BACKGROUND.

Thirty percent of lymph node negative patients with operable breast carcinoma experience disease recurrence within 10 years. Retrospective serial sectioning of axillary lymph nodes has revealed undetected metastases in 9 -30% of these patients. These occult metastases have been shown to have an adverse effect on survival. Serial sectioning (SS) is impractical for all axillary lymph nodes harvested from Levels I and II, but it is feasible if applied only to sentinel lymph nodes.

METHODS.

Sentinel lymph nodes from 52 patients with invasive breast carcinoma were cut at 2 mm intervals, fixed in 10% formalin, and embedded in paraffin.

Sections were taken from the blocks, stained with hematoxylin and eosin (H & E), and compared with cytokeratin-stained sections taken at 0.25 mm intervals throughout the entire blocks.