Outcome of Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy with Methylene Blue Dye in Early-stage Breast Cancer

Background: Axillary staging is the standard of care for all breast cancers amenable to curative treatment. Sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) has been established as the gold standard for axillary staging and has supplanted axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) as a means of regional nodal staging in clinically node-negative breast cancer. Different blue dyes like isosulfan blue dye, patent blue, sulfan blue, radio labeled substances, and methylene blue dye (MBD) have been evaluated for the sentinel node procedure. Aim of the study: The aim of this study was to assess the efficacy of sentinel lymph node biopsy with methylene blue dye in clinically axillary node negative early-stage breast carcinoma as well as to observe the early postoperative outcome of SLN procedure. Method: Between November 2015 to October2017, a total of 18 female patients of 18 years and above, with diagnosis of early-stage (T1/T2) breast carcinoma with clinically negative ipsilateral axillary lymph nodes were studied in the department of surgical oncology, NICRH. Written informed consents were obtained from all patients. Results: In this study, the highest population was in 31-50 years age group with a mean age of 46(SD 12). Out of 18 cases, SLN(s) was identified in 15 cases by using MBD. The identification rate was 83.3%. In frozen section biopsy all SLNs were found positive for malignant cells. Two or more SLNs were positive in 12(66.6%) cases where SLNB was extended to ALND. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) were 100, 50, 80 and 100, respectively. Postoperative morbidity was significantly high in ALND group. Conclusion: This study showed that SLNB is a safe procedure and efficacy of this procedure was very significant. It lowers the unnecessary extended surgery (ALND) which has troublesome postoperative complications. Multicenter studies are required to extract more relevant information in this regard.