Between January and July 1996, 50 females underwent a sentinel axillar
y lymphadenectomy with intraoperative lymphatic mapping for breast can
cer. The blue-stained lymph node was focused in 39 of 51 (76.5%) proce
dures. The mapped sentinel lymph node identified the axillary nodal st
atus in 92.3% (36/39) of cases. Histologic metastasis in the sentinel
node was focused in 41% (16/39) and in 50% (8/16) the blue stained sen
tinel node was solely invaded. The overall sensitivity of the procedur
e was 84% and the specificity 100%. The authors stress the importance
of surgical details to improve the sentinel node identification and th
e development of this new minimally invasive alternative, especially i
n small-sized breast carcinomas.