[Usefulness of lymphatic mapping with sub-areolar injection of patent blue dye, in the typification of breast cancer].

INTRODUCTION: Although the axillary radical dissection continues being the standard treatment for patient with breast cancer, the lymphatic mapping with biopsy of the sentinel node has arisen as a possibility to appropriately staging patients without palpable axillary nodes (NO) and to prevent axillary lymphadenectomy. The best method to perform it is with the association of radiocolloid and dye, nevertheless for this purpose an intraoperatively gamma-probe is needed, when is not possible to get it, the procedure must be done only with dye, therefore is important to select the most successful administration way for the sentinel node (SN) identification.

OBJECTIVE: To show that the lymphatic mapping with subareolar injection of blue dye has a high success rate for lymphatic mapping in breast cancer patients.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: Lymphatic mapping was practiced to 62 breast cancer patients with subareolar injection of blue dye. All the patients were subject to axillary dissection, the index of false negatives, sensitivity and negative predictive values were estimated. The need to perform the mapping with association of radiocolloid--dye was assessed according to the literature.

RESULT: The SN was identified in 58 patients (93.5% success rate), the index of false negatives was of 5.2% with sensitivity of 93% and the negative predictive value was of 97.5%.

CONCLUSIONS: The SN is a predictor of the axillary node state, the subareolar dye injection technique has a high success rate in the identification of the sentinel node.