ABSTRACT
Objective To explore the prospect of clinical application of indocyanine green (ICG) in sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) in patients with breast cancer. Methods Seventy-two female breast cancer patients were selected from those receiving surgery during July 2014 and December 2014, with an age range of 33-67 years and a median age of 50 years, and they were randomly divided into experimental group (n=35) and control group (n=37), ICG and methylene blue as tracers were used respectively for SLNB. The surgical specimens were submitted to frozen section for pathological examination. The patients with metastasis to SLN received axillary lymph node dissection. Results The successful detection rate of metastasis to SLN by ICG method was 94.3%, with a total of 111 SLNs, with an average of 3.17 SLNs for each patient, and the accuracy rate was 94.3%, the sensitivity and false negative rate were 100% and 0%, respectively. On the other hand, the detection rate with methylene blue method was 92.0%, including 78 SLNs, with an average of 2.1 SLNs for each patient, and the accuracy rate was 89.2%, the sensitivity and false negative rates were 92.9% and 7.7%, respectively. The differences between two methods in the average SLNs and false-negative rate were statistically significant (P0.05). Conclusion ICG method for SLNB in breast cancer shows a higher success rate and lower false negative rate, indicating that its clinical efficacy is superior to that of methylene blue, therefore it may be hopeful to be used alone in SLNB for breast cancer.