Frozen Section Evaluation of Methylene Blue Dye based Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy in Early Breast Cancer – A Feasibility Pilot Study in a Tertiary Cancer Centre
Abstract
Background: Most of the major cancer centres have adopted sentinel lymph node biopsy (SNLB) as standard means of axillary nodal assessment as an alternative to axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) in clinically node negative early breast cancers. The benefits of SNLB is to reduce the functional disability which is a potential consequence of ALND. A major pitfall of SNLB is the potential of false negative rate which will increase the risk of an axillary recurrence.
Methods: This is a pilot study of forty one cases of clinically N0, T1 and T2 tumors for whom sentinel lymph node mapping was done using methylene blue dye to detect occult metastasis. This was validated by complete ALND in all cases.
Results: The calculated accuracy of the frozen section analysis was 97.5%, sensitivity was 85.7% and specificity was 100%. Positive predictive value was100%, negative predictive value was 97.14% and false negative rate was 2.86%
Discussion & Conclusion: This study demonstrates a high sensitivity and specificity for frozen sections of SNLB with an accuracy of 96%.
When publishing with Kerala Medicial Journal (KMJ), authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. Work includes the material submitted for publication and any other related material submitted to KMJ. In the event that KMJ does not publish said work, the author(s) will be so notified and all rights assigned hereunder will revert to the author(s).
The assignment of rights to KMJ includes but is not expressly limited to rights to edit, publish, reproduce, distribute copies, include in indexes or search databases in print, electronic, or other media, whether or not in use at the time of execution of this agreement.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
The author(s) hereby represents and warrants that they are sole author(s) of the work, that all authors have participated in and agree with the content and conclusions of the work, that the work is original, and does not infringe upon any copyright, propriety, or personal right of any third party, and that no part of it nor any work based on substantially similar data has been submitted to another publication.
