Sentinel Node Biopsy and Lymphatic Mapping of Patients With Early Stage Breast Cancer: A Validation Study at Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, New Delhi

The objective of this study was to define guidelines for the use of lymphatic mapping of sentinel node in patients with early breast cancer. Sentinel lymph node(s) (SLN(s)) are the first node(s) draining the primary tumor in the regional lymphatic basin. Since a large number of early breast cancer T1 T2 (<3cm) with clinically negative axilla do not have metastasis on histopathology of the axillary glands, these patients undergo unnecessary axillary node dissection. The hypothesis that the histologic characteristics of the SLN predicts the histologic characteristics of the remaining lymph nodes in the axilla has been tested for the last 15 years. India has been slow, primarily because of lack of early breast cancer patients and lack of technological support. We present our first 20 cases done as a validation study, with 95% detection rate, <5% false negative rate and 95% positive predictive value.