Background: The most common tracers used for lymphatic mapping in sentinel lymph node dissection (SLND) are blue dye and radio-colloid. The former is associated with hypersensitivity, and the latter is not available in some institutions. It is still unclear as to which subsets of patients benefit most from SLND. In this study, we tried to evaluate the usefulness of activated carbon in SLND in the early stages of breast cancer.
Methods: Patients with palpable lesions diagnosed as ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) or intraductal carcinoma with micro-invasion (DCMI) from their core-needle biopsy specimens were eligible for the study. A 0.4-0.6 cc emulsion of activated carbon particles (ACP) was injected peri-lesionally or subdermally, 5 minutes before modified radical mastectomy. When the axillary compartment was entered, the black-stained sentinel nodes (SLNs) were dissected and examined with H&E stain by frozen section. The extension of subsequent axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) was determined by the status of the sentinel nodes.
Results: Twenty-eight patients were diagnosed as DCIS and 10 as DCMI initially. The SLNs were successfully localized in 33 patients (86.8%), with an average of 2.4 SLNs dissected. The SLNs were positive for metastasis in three patients, and the non-sentinel axillary lymph nodes (ALNs) were also positive in one of them. The final diagnosis of these patients turned out to be infiltrating ductal carcinoma. The SLNs were negative for metastasis in 30 patients, and all the ALNs of these patients were also negative. Among these 33 patients, the final diagnosis was up-graded in nine (27.3%), including the three patients with positive SLNs. The SLNs were not identified in five patients, and the ALNs were positive for metastasis in one of them.
Conclusions: ACP is an acceptable tracer for lymphatic mapping in SLND. For patients with palpable, biopsy-proven DCIS or DCMI, SLND can be used to select patients for ALND.