Sentinel lymph node mapping in early-stage breast cancer: Technical issues and results with vital blue dye mapping and radioguided surgery

✍ Scribed by Giuseppe Canavese; Marco Gipponi; Alessandra Catturich; Carmine Di Somma; Carlo Vecchio; Francesco Rosato; Pierluigi Percivale; Luciano Moresco; Guido Nicolò; Bruno Spina; Giuseppe Villa; Pietro Bianchi; Fausto Badellino

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 110 KB
• Volume: 74
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-4790
• DOI: 10.1002/1096-9098(200005)74:1<61::aid-jso14>3.0.co;2-9

✦ Synopsis

lymphadenectomies were performed because 1 patient had bilateral breast cancer; the sN was identified in 45/49 lymphadenectomies (92%). The sN was intraoperatively negative at frozen-section examination in 33 cases, and final histology confirmed the absence of metastases in 31/33 cases (94%), whereas in 2 cases (6%) micrometastases only were detected. Final histology of the sN predicted axillary lymph node status with an 87.5% sensitivity (14/16), a 100% specificity (29/29), a 93.5% negative predictive value (29/31), and an overall 95.5% accuracy (43/45). Conclusions: Sentinel lymphadenectomy can be better accomplished when both mapping techniques (vital blue dye and radioguided surgery) are used. In this group of patients, agreement of intraoperative histology of the sN with the final diagnosis was 94%, and sN histology accurately predicted axillary lymph node status in 43/45 lymphadenectomy specimens (95.5%) in which an sN was identified.