Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 24, 2026
The Application of 1% Methylene Blue Dye As a Single Technique in Breast Cancer Sentinel Node Biopsy
Published on: June 1, 2019
Criteria for establishing the adequacy of a sentinel lymphadenectomy
Mona Duncan1, Amy Cech, Debra Wechter
1Department of General, Vascular, and Thoracic Surgery, Virginia Mason Medical Center, C6-GSUR, PO Box 900, 1100 Ninth Ave., Seattle, WA 98111, USA.
Background:
Criteria are needed that could be used to terminate a sentinel lymphadenectomy for breast cancer prior to removing every sentinel lymph node, without increasing false negative rates.
Methods:
Quantitative information on the radioactivity and color of sentinel lymph nodes removed from 541 breast cancer patients was correlated with pathologic information to determine when a sentinel lymphadenectomy could be terminated based on characteristics of the initially removed nodes.
Results:
Tumor was found in the first two sentinel lymph nodes removed in 127 of 129 node-positive patients. In 65% of patients who were able to be evaluated, the most radioactive lymph node was a positive lymph node. When any axillary lymph node was blue, then the first tumor-containing sentinel lymph node was also blue.
Conclusions:
Removal of the most radioactive lymph node does not insure accurate assessment of the axilla. Removal of two sentinel lymph nodes accurately staged 98.4% of node-positive patients and 99.6% of the entire study population.
