Lymphoscintigraphy

Abstract

Lymphoscintigraphy has recently acquired an expanding role in clinical medicine. Most evaluations of lymphedema have assessed the lower extremities, but the upper extremities have also been studied, especially in patients with breast cancer who develop lymphedema following axillary dissection. Over the past three decades, in addition to its increasing utilization in the evaluation of lymphedema, it has been used to determine metastatic drainage sites in breast cancer, melanoma, and other cancer patients. In breast cancer patients, lymphoscintigraphy was originally used to detect tumor metastases to the axillary and internal mammary lymph node chains. Later, it was applied to the localization of lymph nodes for radiation therapy planning and for determining the completeness of surgical adenectomies. Currently, it is used mainly to determine the location of sentinel lymph node(s).