Open AccessOutcomes of “one‐day” vs “two‐day” injection protocols using Tc‐99m tilmanocept for sentinel lymph node biopsy in breast cancer
Author(s) -
Unkart Jonathan T.,
Proudfoot James,
Wallace Anne M.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
the breast journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.533
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1524-4741
pISSN - 1075-122X
DOI - 10.1111/tbj.13002
Subject(s) - medicine , sentinel lymph node , biopsy , breast cancer , radiology , lymph node , surgery , cancer
No prior studies have compared Tc‐99m tilmanocept (Tc TM ) one‐day and two‐day injection protocols for sentinel lymph node ( SLN ) biopsy in breast cancer ( BC ). We retrospectively identified patients with clinically node‐negative BC undergoing SLN biopsy at our institution. Patients received a single, intradermal peritumoral injection of Tc TM on day of surgery or day prior to surgery in addition to an intraoperative injection of isosulfan blue dye. Univariable and multivariable Poisson regression count models were constructed to assess the effects of injection timing, radiologist, patient and surgeon characteristics on the number of removed SLN s. A total of 617 patients underwent SLN biopsy with Tc TM and blue dye. Sixty‐seven (10.9%) patients were injected with the two‐day protocol. Patients in the one‐day protocol had a mean of 3.0 (standard deviation ( SD ) 1.9) SLN s removed compared with 2.7 ( SD 1.4) SLN s in the two‐day protocol, P ‐value = .13. On multivariable analysis, patient age and operating surgeon significantly affected the number of removed SLN s; however, the injection timing and the nuclear radiologist did not influence the number of removed SLN s. The performance of Tc‐99m tilmanocept did not differ significantly between one‐day and two‐day injection protocols. These results are similar to other radiotracers used for SLN biopsy in BC .