Targeted axillary dissection using Radioguided Occult Lesion Localization technique in the clinically negative marked lymph node after neoadjuvant treatment in breast cancer patients

Abstract

Purpose: To be aware of the feasibility of targeted axillary dissection (TAD) injecting ^99mTechnetium-labeled macroaggregated albumin (^99mTc-MAA) preoperatively into the clipped lymph node of patients with axillary complete clinical response (ycN0), after neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) for breast cancer.

Patients and methods: A retrospective observational study was performed on N1 patients with a clipped positive node and a clinically negative axilla (ycN0) after NAC in one center. The pretreatment positive lymph node was injected with ^99mTc-MAA the day before surgery and identified intraoperatively with a radioguided occult lesion localization (ROLL) technique. Patients were subjected to a TAD with the intent of identifying the clipped node and other/s sentinel nodes through a standard sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB).

Results: 54 patients and 55 axillary clipped nodes were included. The clip was intraoperatively encountered in every patient, accomplishing a 100% detection rate, although in one case no lymphatic tissue could be found in the intraoperative frozen section. An axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) was avoided in 62.9% of the cases (34/54).

Conclusion: The use of the ROLL technique is a highly valuable tool since it allows a 100% success rate in retrieving the marker (and a 98.1% rate in detecting the clipped lymph node) in ycN0 breast cancer patients.

Keywords: Marked lymph node; Neoadjuvant chemotherapy breast cancer; Radioguided occult lesion localization; Targeted axillary dissection.