ABSTRACT
Purpose@#As breast-conserving surgery has become a standard treatment for patients with breast cancer, several approaches have been devised to achieve desirable cosmetic results, including a method using a patient’s own tissues or organs or a mesh to resolve defects. However, its application has been limited due to the associated complications. Accordingly, breast reconstruction using an acellular dermal matrix (ADM) has been introduced to improve patients’ cosmetic satisfaction. However, the comparison of reconstruction and primary sutures using this method has not been well-studied. Therefore, this study surveyed patients who underwent breast cancer surgery based on cosmetic indicators to study the efficacy of ADM after breast-conserving surgery. @*Methods@#This retrospective study included 68 patients diagnosed with breast cancer who underwent breast-conserving surgery at a single institution by a single surgeon from April 2019 to December 2020. @*Results@#This study included 68 patients who underwent breast-conserving surgery. Among them, 22 patients underwent breast-conserving surgery using ADM, while 46 patients received only primary sutures without ADM. Among the items of the Breast Cancer Treatment Outcome Scale-12 (BCTOS-12), patient satisfaction was significantly higher in the group using ADM, than that in the control group in terms of breast shape (1.86±0.89 vs. 2.39±0.80, p=0.017). Regarding breast tenderness, the result also confirmed the group treated using ADM experienced less tenderness than the control group not treated with ADM (1.68±0.78 vs. 2.22±1.03, p=0.035). The two groups exhibited no significant differences in breast texture, arm heaviness, nipple appearance, shoulder discomfort, arm discomfort, scar tissue, arm swelling, breast swelling, fit of the bra, and breast sensitivity. @*Conclusion@#Breast reconstruction using ADM in patients with breast cancer was effective from a cosmetic perspective. Prospective multicenter studies should be conducted to provide clear guidelines.
ABSTRACT
To acquire good image quality and to minimize unnecessary radiation dose to patients, it is important to ensure that the radiopharmaceutical administered is accurately measured. Quality control of radionuclide calibrators should be performed to achieve these goals. The purpose of this study is to support the quality control of radionuclide calibrators in nuclear medicine centers and to investigate the level of measurement accuracy of the radionuclide calibrators. 58 radionuclide calibrators from 45 nuclear medicine centers, 74 radionuclide calibrators from 58 nuclear medicine centers, and 60 radionuclide calibrators from 45 nuclear medicine centers were tested with I-131, Tc-99m and I-123, respectively. The results showed that 81% of calibrators for I-131, 61% of calibrators for Tc-99m and 67% of calibrators for I-123 were within +/-5%. 17% of calibrators for I-131, 20% of calibrators for Tc-99m and 15% of calibrators for I-123 had a deviation in the range 5%10%. Follow-up measurements were performed on the calibrators whose error exceeded the +/-10% limit. As a result, some of the calibrator showed an improvement and their deviation decreased below the +/-10% limit. The results have shown that such comparisons are necessary to improve the accuracy of the measurement and to identify malfunctioning radionuclide calibrators.