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Updated: Apr 5, 2026
The Application of 1% Methylene Blue Dye As a Single Technique in Breast Cancer Sentinel Node Biopsy
Published on: June 1, 2019
[Axillary lymph node metastases with an occult breast: About 16 cases from a cohort of 7770 patients]
F Couder1, C Schmitt1, I Treilleux2
1Département de chirurgie oncologique, centre Léon-Bérard, centre de lutte contre le cancer Lyon et Rhône-Alpes, 28, rue Laënnec, 69373 Lyon cedex 08, France.
Objectives:
Isolated axillary lymph node metastases is an unusual clinical presentation of breast carcinoma. We studied its different issues.
Methods:
This study is a follow-up study of 16patients, treated between 1996 and 2012, presenting with axillary metastases with an occult breast carcinoma, which could not be identified by physical examination nor by a conventional imaging or a breast MRI. Clinical characteristics, histological analysis, treatment, monitoring and five-year survival rate were studied.
Results:
The incidence of this kind of breast cancer was 0.20%. A breast MRI was performed in 75% of the patients. The histology of these tumors showed a rate of hormono-sensibility of 50% and an HER2 overexpression of 44%. Sixty-nine percent of the patients had no breast surgery or radiotherapy; global five-year survival rate for these women was 77.4%±11.5.
Conclusion:
The survival rates of this study should lead the practitioner to choose a less aggressive breast therapy. Moreover, the histological characteristics explain the high metastatic potential of these tumors, and relate them to the HER2+ subclass of gene expression patterns of breast carcinomas.
