European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine

Abstract

Background: Aim of this study to estimate the diagnostic accuracy of clinical assessment with ultrasound guided axillary node core needle biopsy (CNB) / fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) for axillary staging in early stage breast cancer. Materials and Methods: This prospective study was conducted in a tertiary care centre of central India in medical college hospital Jabalpur. We identified 64 consecutive patients of newly diagnosed early stage breast cancer. After clinical examination, ultrasound axilla guided core biopsy or fine needle aspiration cytology was performed if the node was in ultrasound. Axillary node dissection was performed in all patients. Preoperative and postoperative nodal positivity was compared and analysed. Results: Clinically and by ultrasound sensitivity and specificity of metastatic nodes was 50 and 75% and 75 and 83% respectively. False negative rate of our study was 6.2% that is equivalent to sentinel node biopsy. Sensitivity of guided FNAC/biopsy was 50 % in our study. Conclusion: Our study showed use of detailed clinical assessment is a good alternative where facility of sentinel node biopsy is not available. It is a good and less morbid alternative to sentinel node biopsy and if the result is positive can proceed directly to axillary node dissection