Authors: Mehmet Keskek Sener Balas Aytac Gokoz Iskender Sayek
Publish Date: 2006/12/25
Volume: 36, Issue: 12, Pages: 1047-1052
Abstract
We reviewed 568 consecutive patients with breast cancer who underwent complete axillary lymph node dissections ALND between January 1998 and December 2004 For patients with skip axillary lymph node metastases resectioning and immunohistochemical staining of the remaining part of paraffin blocks from level I lymph nodes were done to determine whether there were any micrometastases in this group of lymph nodesSkip axillary metastases were found in 27 10 of 268 patients with axillary lymph node metastases Reevaluation of the level I lymph nodes both with thin sectioning and immunohistochemical staining in the patients with axillary skip metastases revealed no micrometastases No significant correlation was found between the demographic and histopathological variables of the patients with skip metastases and those with regular axillary metastasesThese results suggest that skip axillary metastases are actual skip metastases not a continuation of undetected level I micrometastases Moreover none of the clinical and histopathological measures of primary tumors are predictors of the presence of skip metastases
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