Increasing age does not affect efficacy of sentinel lymph node biopsy using smaller-sized technetium-99m tin colloids for breast cancer patients.
BACKGROUND
Increasing age of breast cancer patients was reported to cause not only failure of sentinel lymph node (SLN) identification but also false negative results.


METHODS
A retrospective review was conducted of breast cancer patients who underwent sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) using small-sized technetium-99m-labeled tin colloid (particle size: 200-400 nm in diameter). A comparison between 82 patients who were less than 60 years and 40 patients who were > or =60 years of age was performed to evaluate the efficacy of SLNB using the small-sized tin colloid in older patients.


RESULTS
One hundred twenty-two clinically node-negative breast cancer patients underwent SLNB. Apart from age, there were no statistically significant differences between the younger patients and the older patients in terms of the clinicopathologic characteristics. Successful mapping rates, false negative rates, and accuracy were comparable between the 2 groups.


CONCLUSIONS
SLNB using the small-sized tin colloid was not affected by increasing age.
Jinno
Hiromitsu
H
Department of Surgery, Keio University School of Medicine, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160, Japan. jinnoh@dd.iij4u.or.jp
Ikeda
Tadashi
T
Asaga
Sota
S
Muto
Takeshi
T
Kitagawa
Yuko
Y
Fujii
Hirofumi
H
Mukai
Makio
M
Kitajima
Masaki
M
D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology* / Q000601:surgery*; D005188:False Negative Reactions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D009361:Neoplasm Invasiveness / Q000473:pathology*; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D021701:Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D017556:Technetium Compounds; D017971:Tin Compounds
D017556:Technetium Compounds; D017971:Tin Compounds; C033493:technetium Tc 99m tin colloid