Breast Cancer Sentinel Lymph Node Detection Rate: First Large Scale Multi-Centric Data for Technetium Phytate

Abstract

Background: Sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) with injection of radiopharmaceuticals is now the standard of care for stagin the axilla in patients with breast cancer. Sulfur or antimony colloids labeled with 99mTechnetium (Tc) are used globally for th procedure, with a detection rate of 94%. However, in Iran, Tc phytate has been used because it is more easily producible in th country. The detection rate with Tc phytate has not been well determined in large-scale studies. Objective: We performed this study to report the detection rate of SLNB with Tc phytate, its advantages and disadvantages usin large multicentric data. Methods: This is a retrospective cross-sectional multicenter study. Participants were breast cancer patients without previous histor of axillary surgery, who underwent sentinel node biopsy using Tc phytate on the morning of surgery or the day before. The detectio rate was calculated as the number of patients with histologically positive sentinel nodes to all patients with histologically positiv lymph nodes; we compared those injected on the day of surgery and those injected on the day before. Results: Overall, 2663 women aged 50.2 ± 11.6 years were included. The detection rate was 91.8% (806 out of 878). The fals negative rate was 8.2% overall, and statistically similar for injections on the day or the day before surgery (2.9 vs 2.1; P= 0.32). Conclusion: Tc phytate has a good detection rate for breast radio-guided SLNB with similar result for injections on the surgery da or the day before it.