A Study of Omitting the Intraoperative Frozen-section Diagnosis of Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy in Early Breast Cancer

Abstract

Among women with primary breast cancer of cTis/1/2, N0, having no preoperative chemotherapy, undergoing breast-conserving surgery and receiving whole breast irradiation and adjuvant systemic therapy, axillary lymph node dissection can be omitted for 1 or 2 sentinel lymph nodes metastasis cases. In our hospital, we omit the intraoperative frozen-section diagnosis of sentinel lymph node (SLN) in these cases. In this study, we compared for the operation time, hospitalization period, and number of reoperations between the omitted group and the control group.

In those criteria, the omitted group comprised 68 patients without the intraoperative frozen-section diagnosis from January 2018 to July 2019, and the control group comprised another 68 patients with the intraoperative frozen-section diagnosis from February 2017 to January 2018. We compared those groups.

As a result, the median operation time was 65 minutes (32-112) in the omitted group and 82 minutes (35-146) in the control group, with a statistically significant difference. There was no difference in the median hospitalization period of 2 days. There were no cases of reoperation.

Omitting the intraoperative frozen-section diagnosis significantly shortened the operation time, and no case of reoperation was observed.