Objectives: The cause of cervical lymphadenopathy varies from inflammation to malignancy. Accurate and prompt diagnosis is crucial as delayed detection of malignant lymph node can lead to a worse prognosis. To improve the diagnostic accuracy of metastatic lymph node, electrical spectroscopy was employed to study human normal and metastatic lymph nodes using a hypodermic needle with fine interdigitated electrodes on its tip (EoN).
Subjects and methods: The electrical impedance of samples collected from 8 patients were analyzed in the sweeping frequency range from 1 Hz to 1 MHz. To align the impedance level data of the patients, normalized impedance was employed.
Results: The optimal frequency exhibiting the best discrimination results between the normal and cancerous tissues was introduced based on a discrimination index. A high sensitivity (86.2%) and specificity (88.9%) were obtained, which implied that the EoN holds the potential to improve the in vivo diagnostic accuracy of metastatic lymph node during biopsy and surgery.
Conclusion: EoN has a promising potential to be utilized in real-time in actual clinical trials without a need for any pre/post-treatment during FNA or surgery. We believe that the EoN could reduce unnecessary operations with its associated morbidity.
Keywords: Biopsy; Cancerous tissue; Electrical impedance spectroscopy; Metastatic lymph node; Needle.
Copyright © 2020. Published by Elsevier B.V.