Radioguided occult lesion localisation for wide local excision, excision biopsies and in combination with radioisotope sentinel lymph node localisation (SNOLL) - 10 year experience of a single centre.

BACKGROUND

Various techniques are used to localise non-palpable breast cancer and identify sentinel lymph nodes (SLN). Seed-based localisations can be expensive, may dislodge and require special intraoperative equipment. We report our experience of using radioguided occult lesion localisation (ROLL) alone and with SLN (SNOLL).

METHODS

This is a retrospective review of all patients undergoing breast excision procedures using ROLL between January 2008 and 2018. On the morning of surgery or the day before, patients had 10 MBq Technetium 99 m colloid injected into the centre of the breast lesion under ultrasound guidance with a further 10 MBq injected into the periareolar skin if SLN was planned. Surgery was performed with the aid of a gamma probe to detect the radioisotope signal in the breast and axilla and specimen X-rays of the breast excision specimen were performed with cavity shaves considered if appropriate.

RESULTS

1073 ROLL-guided excisions were performed in 1050 patients: 1043 of these were wide local excisions (WLE), which included 11 level two oncoplastic procedures, with the remaining being excision biopsies. 957 of the WLEs were SNOLL procedures. ROLL was successful in 1065 (99.3 %) procedures. Of the eight ROLL failures, three were due to incorrect lesion localisation and two were due to diffuse ROLL signal. SLN biopsy was successful in 955 (99.8 %) of cases.

CONCLUSIONS

SNOLL/ROLL is a reliable, cheap and easy localisation technique where the marker cannot be dislodged during the procedure. Both localisations are performed on the day of surgery using the same equipment for signal detection in the breast and axilla.