Imprint cytology versus frozen section analysis for intraoperative assessment of sentinel lymph node in breast cancer

Breast Cancer : Targets and Therapy
Thalia PetropoulouNikolaos Arkadopoulos

Abstract

Sentinel lymph node (SLN) biopsy is the gold standard for surgical staging of the axilla in breast cancer (BC). Frozen section (FS) remains the most popular means of intraoperative SLN diagnosis. Imprint cytology (IC) has also been suggested as a less expensive and equally accurate alternative to FS. The aim of our study was to perform a direct comparison between IC and FS on the same SLNs of BC cases operated in a single center by the same surgical team. Into this prospective study we enrolled 60 consecutive patients with histologically proven T1-T3 BC and clinically negative axilla. Sentinel nodes were detected using a standard protocol. The SLN(s) was always assessed by IC as well as FS analysis and immunohistochemistry. Nevertheless, all intraoperative decisions were based on FS analysis. During the study period 60 patients with invasive BC were registered, with 80 SLNs harvested. Mean number of SLN(s) identified for each patient was 1.33. The sensitivity and specificity were 90% and 100%, respectively, for IC, and 80% and 100% for FS. Relevant positive/negative predictive values were 100%/98% for IC and 100%/96.15%, respectively, for FS. Overall accuracy was 98% for IC and 97% for FS. Therefore, statistically significant d...Continue Reading

Methods Mentioned

BETA
biopsy
dissection
flow cytometry
nucleic acid amplification

Software Mentioned

SPSS

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