Study of sentinel lymph node biopsy after preoperative chemotherapy in patients with breast cancer.

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104 Background: Despite the increasing use of both sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) and preoperative chemotherapy (PST) in patients with operable breast cancer, there is still limited information on the feasibility and accuracy of SLNB following PST. In this study, the feasibility and accuracy of SLNB for breast cancer patients with clinically negative lymph nodes after PST were investigated. In addition, conditions that may affect SLN biopsy detection and false-negative rates with respect to clinical tumor response and clinical tumor/nodal status before PST were analyzed. Methods: Between 2003 and 2008, 200 patients with stage II and III breast cancer previously treated with PST were enrolled in this study. The eligible criteria for PST were (a) primary tumor > 3cm or (b) positive axillary lymph node status on initial examination. FNA biopsy was performed for clinically or ultrasonographically suspicious axillary lymph nodes. The patients then underwent SLNB, which involved a combination of intradermal injection over the tumor of radiocolloid and subareolar injection of blue dye. This was followed by Level I/II axillary lymph node dissection (ALND). Results: The median patient age was 49 years, and the median primary tumor size was 4.9 cm. The overall SLN identification rate was 94.5% (189 of 200). In 178/189 patients (94%) the SLN accurately predicted the axillary status. Eleven patients had a false-negative SLN biopsies, yielding a false-negative rate of 12.9%. There were no significant differences in the SLN identification rate according to tumor classifications before PST, the clinical nodal status before PST, the clinical tumor response after PST, or pathological response of the tumor after PST, although the SLN identification rate tended to be lower in patients with a T4 primary tumor. Conclusions: Our data and some reports suggested that SLNB was feasible method for axillary staging in breast cancer patients who received PST even in patients who initially with lymph node positive disease. However, false-negative rate of SLNB in patients with clinical and pathological complete tumor response tended to be higher than other group.