Comparison of cythopathology and frozen section methods in the intraoperative evaluation of breast sentinel lymph node

Abstract

ABSTRACT Introduction: Cytopathologic analysis (CP) and frozen section (FS) are available techniques for intraoperative evaluation of sentinel lymph node in surgeries for breast cancer treatment that will define the need for axillary lymphadenectomy. Objective: To compare CP and FS of axillary sentinel lymph nodes in metastasis detection of patients with breast cancer. Materials and methods: The electronic files from January 2010 and December 2014, from the Centro de Patologia de Curitiba, Parana, Brazil were reviewed, and were included all the cases in which the result of intraoperative exams by both methods, CP and FS, were recorded. The results of intraoperative exams were compared to the histopathology by hematoxylin and eosin (HE) staining. Results: A total of 183 sentinel lymph nodes from 94 patients were included. The mean age was 55 years and mean lymph node size was 11.70 mm. There was one false-positive case in both intraoperative methods and four false-negatives in FS, which were micrometastasis. FS's sensibility, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) and accuracy were respectively 80%, 99.38%, 94.11%, 96.42% and 97.26%. Regarding CP, there were six false-negative in which four were micrometastasis. CP's sensibility, specificity, PPV and NPV and accuracy were respectively 70%, 99.38%, 93.33%, 96.42% and 97.26%. Conclusion: The results of the present study shows that both CP and FS are reliable techniques for metastasis detection in breast sentinel lymph nodes, and are equivalent in sensibility, specificity, accuracy, PPV and NPV.