Correlation between Grading Histopathology and Sentinel Lymph Node Metastasis in Early Breast Cancer in University of Sumatera Utara Hospital

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Breast cancer is a malignancy in breast tissue from the duct or lobar epithelium. American Joint Committee on Cancer has specified important prognostic factors such as primary tumor size, regional lymph node status, and distant metastasis. Axillary lymph node status has been one of the most reliable prognostic factors in early breast cancer in women. Axillary lymph node dissection is an old method to identify metastasis in axillary lymph nodes and started being replaced by sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB). SLNB has been introduced as a minimal invasive procedure, but in Indonesia, this procedure cannot be done due to technology limitation. Grading tumor is one of the predictor factors that can predict lymph node metastasis. This predictor factor has been associated with sentinel lymph node metastasis significantly. AIM: According to this, we conduct this study to analyze the correlation between grading histopathology in breast cancer with sentinel lymph node metastasis to lower false-negative rate in SLNB using methylene blue dye. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this study, we included 51 patients that qualified using inclusion and exclusion criteria. Then, sentinel lymph node metastasis and grading histopathology data were retrieved from the patient’s medical record. This data are analyzed using SPSS with Chi-square test. RESULTS: The most type of breast cancer in this study is invasive ductal carcinoma was found in 40 patients (78.4%). There are 22 of 51 patients (51.6%) with metastasis to sentinel lymph node, have Grade 3 in histopathologic findings. CONCLUSIONS: The statistical evaluation showed that there is significant correlation between grading histopathology and SLNB with p = 0.001.