Failure of scintigraphy lymphatic mapping in endometrial cancer. Causes and solutions

To evaluate the effect of technical problems and patient characteristics on sentinel lymph node (SLN) scintigraphic detection and mapping success in early stages of endometrial cancer (EC).

Patients with clinical early stage EC (IA-IB) underwent SLN mapping using technetium-99m-nanocolloid, between September 2011 and February 2020 were included. There were excluded cases with technical problems, 92 patients were included for the analysis of the diagnostic performance and the relation of mapping failure (pelvic unilateral or not detected SLN) with patient (age, body mass index, previous pelvic disease or surgery) and disease characteristics (histology, grade, myometrial invasion, lymphovascular space infiltration, tumor size, and lymphatic infiltration risk).

The overall detection rate was 79%. Lymph node metastases were diagnosed in 7 patients. Age (P = .01), depth of myometrial invasion ≥50% (P = .04) and high risk of lymphatic infiltration (P = .02) were positively associated with mapping failure. In multivariate analysis, age was significantly associated with mapping failure [odds ratio = 1.63, 95%CI: 1.06-2.50; P = .027].

Age, depth of myometrial invasion and high risk of lymphatic infiltration were the factors associated with higher mapping failure. An individualized injection technique, optimizing the methodology, could minimize the detection failures.