The clinical significance of sentinel lymph node biopsy in breast cancer surgery

Objective To evaluate the accuracy of sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) in predicting the axillary lymph node status in breast cancer patients undergoing a breastectomy. Methods From Mar 2002 to Jun 2003,patent blue dye and/or 99m Tc-Sc were used to detect sentinel lymph nodes,samples were sent for fast pathology.Three patients in which the SLN were judged as negative by both the two tests were freed of futher axillary lymph node dissection (ALND). Results SLN were successfully identified in 78 of 81 (96.3%) patients. The accuracy rate of SLNB to predict axillary lymph node status was 97.5%,with 9.7% false negative rate. The success rate,accuracy rate and false negative rate by blue dye only and by a combination of two above methods were 92.5%,94.2%,15.8%,and 100%,100%,0, respectively . Conclusions SLNB accurately predict the axillary status in clinically node negative breast cancer patients .