Abstract
Background: For patients with microinvasive breast cancer, the value of intraoperative analysis of sentinel lymph nodes (SLNs) and complete axillary lymph node dissection (CALND) is not well known. Methods: All patients staged T1mic from 2001 to 2005 were analyzed. Results: Among all 81 patients, 4 (5%) had SLN metastases detected with hematoxylin and eosin staining and 2 (2%) had metastases identified by immunohistochemistry staining only. Seventy-seven patients (95%) underwent SLN biopsy; 3 (4%) had hematoxylin and eosin SLN metastases and 2 (3%) had immunohistochemistry-detected metastases. One SLN metastasis was identified on frozen section analysis. No patient with a SLN metastasis had additional metastases on CALND. The patient charges for frozen section analyses were $39,578 for 77 patients. This prevented 1 reoperative CALND at a charge of $20,274. Conclusions: Frozen section analysis should be used only in select patients with microinvasive breast cancer and CALND is of limited value for these patients.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 845-849 |
Number of pages | 5 |
Journal | American journal of surgery |
Volume | 194 |
Issue number | 6 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 2007 |
Keywords
- Breast cancer
- Ductal carcinoma-in-situ with microinvasion
- Frozen section analysis
- Microinvasion
- Sentinel node
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Surgery