sentinel node biopsy for breast cancer patients issues for discussion and our practice对乳腺癌患者前哨淋巴结活检问题讨论和实践.pdfVIP

SAGE-Hindawi Access to Research Pathology Research International Volume 2011, Article ID 109712, 8 pages doi:10.4061/2011/109712 Review Article Sentinel Node Biopsy for Breast Cancer Patients: Issues for Discussion and Our Practice Georgios Pechlivanides, Dorothy Vassilaros, Anastasios Tsimpanis, Anastasia Apostolopoulou, and Stamatis Vasilaros “Prolipsis” Diagnostic Center, Breast Unit, 88A Mihalacopoulou Street, 11528 Athens, Greece Correspondence should be addressed to Georgios Pechlivanides, geopech@otenet.gr Received 14 September 2010; Accepted 9 December 2010 Academic Editor: Nicole Nicosia Esposito Copyright © 2011 Georgios Pechlivanides et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Sentinel node biopsy has been established for several years now as a standard procedure of breast cancer surgery, but there are several variations of the indications and the technique used. This paper provides information regarding several issues of debate for its application as are the selection criteria, the application to patients with multifocal/multicentric breast cancer or DCIS, postneoadjuvant chemotherapy, the necessary number of nodes to be biopsied, the need for lymphoscintigraphy, the technique for frozen section, the factors that may predict nonsentinel nodes (NSNs) involvement, the value of micrometastasis and isolated tumour cells, the internal mammary chain sentinel nodes, and finally the axillary recurrence after SLNB. Our view for these issues is included together with our experience of 430 SLNBs. 1. Introduction breast cancer, ducta