Dye-Guided Sentinel Lymphadenectomy in Clinically Node-Negative and Node-Positive Breast Cancer Patients.

Area of Science:

• Oncology
• Surgical Oncology

Background:

• Sentinel lymphadenectomy (SLN) is used to evaluate axillary nodal status in breast cancer, aiming to prevent unnecessary axillary dissection.
• Clinical node assessment accuracy is limited in both node-negative and node-positive breast cancer patients.
• Previous studies primarily focused on SLN utility in clinically node-negative patients.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the effectiveness of dye-guided sentinel lymphadenectomy in assessing axillary nodal status.
• To compare SLN evaluation results with formal axillary dissection findings.
• To assess SLN utility in both clinically node-negative and node-positive breast cancer patients.

Main Methods:

• Dye-guided sentinel lymphadenectomy was performed on 50 breast cancer patients (38 clinically node-negative, 12 clinically node-positive).
• All patients subsequently underwent formal axillary dissection.
• Sentinel lymph node (SLN) results from imprint cytology, frozen sections, and permanent sections were compared with each other and with non-SLN histology.

Main Results:

• The SLN was successfully identified in 79% of node-negative and 92% of node-positive patients.
• For node-negative patients, SLN evaluation showed 90% diagnostic accuracy, 72% sensitivity, and 100% specificity.
• For node-positive patients, SLN evaluation achieved 100% diagnostic accuracy, 100% sensitivity, and 100% specificity, with no significant differences between groups.

Conclusions:

• Sentinel lymphadenectomy is a valuable tool for staging the axilla in breast cancer patients.
• The procedure demonstrates high accuracy in both clinically node-negative and node-positive populations.
• SLN assessment can reliably guide decisions regarding further axillary dissection.