Avoiding unnecessary intraoperative sentinel lymph node frozen section biopsy of patients with early breast cancer

After the publication of the ACOSOG (American College of Surgeons Oncology Group) Z0011 trial, the rate of axillary lymph node dissection has reduced. Thus, the need for intraoperative frozen section biopsy of sentinel lymph nodes (SLNs) has become controversial. We identified patients for whom intraoperative SLN frozen section biopsy could be omitted and found that frozen section biopsy rate can be reduced.

We reviewed the records of patients with tumors ≤5 cm in diameter who underwent breast-conserving surgery between January 2013 and December 2019 at Seoul St. Mary's Hospital. Clinicopathological and imaging characteristics were compared according to number of positive SLNs (0-2 SLNs positive vs. ≥3 SLNs positive).

A total of 1,983 patients were included in this study. Thirty-two patients (1.6%) had at least 3 positive SLNs. Patients with ≥3 positive SLNs had significantly larger tumors and were more frequently high-grade tumors (P < 0.001 and P = 0.002, respectively). Identification of suspicious lymph nodes on imaging studies was also associated with the presence of ≥3 positive SLNs (hazard ratio, 11.54; 95% confidence interval, 4.42-30.10). All patients with none or only 1 suspicious lymph node on any imaging modality (n = 647, 32.6%) had 0-2 positive SLNs. Also, among patients with clinical T1-stage tumors and at least 2 suspicious lymph nodes on only 1 imaging modality (n = 514, 25.9%), only 2 cases had ≥3 positive SLNs.

We found that intraoperative SLN frozen biopsy could be omitted in patients using tumor size and axillary lymph node status on imaging modality.