Evaluation of methylene blue method for sentinel lymph node biopsy in breast cancer

Objective To summarize and evaluate the application of methylene blue for sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) in breast cancer.Methods One hundred cases of breast cancer with T 1?2 N 0M 0 stage were studied.During surgery,radical or modified mastectomy was preceeded following injection of 1% methylene blue around the primary tumor,to locate axillary lymph nodes and resect of sentinel lymph nodes (SLN).The resected specimens were examined.Results SLN was found in 78 of 100 cases (78.0%),in the 78 patients,40 (51.2%) had histologically positive axillary lymph nodes,including 3 patients with negative SLN.The accuracy of SLNB to predict the axillary lymph node status was 96.1% and false negative rate 7.5% (3/40).The sensitivity of methylene blue tracing in this study was 92.5 %(37/40).The positive and negative predictive values were 100% and 90.2%.Conclusion With improvement of technique and accumulation of experience,methylene blue tracing in biopsy of SLN is effective in clinical practices.