RESUMO
Objective To study the accuracy and the clinical significance of sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB)after neoadjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer.Methods A total of 90 patients with StageⅡorⅢbreast cancer and negative axillary node after neoadjuvant chemotherapy were enrolled in the study.Mapping proce- dure and SLNB were performed using methylene blue injected at the site of the primary breast cancer,followed by the axillary lymph node dissection.Results The sentinel lymph node(SLN)was successfully identified in 82 out of 90 patients(91.1%).The number of sentinel harvested nodes ranged from 1 to 4(average 1.6).The accuracy of SLNB to predict the axillary lymph node status was 93.9 %(77/82),the sensitivity,positive predictive value,nega- tive predictive value and false negative rate were 87.5 %(40/45),100 %,88.1% and 11.1%(5/45),respectively. The SLN identification rate tended to be higher and false negative rate tended to be lower in patients with T2 prima- ry tumor before neoadjuvant chemotherapy.Conclusion Our study indicated that SLNB after neoadjuvant chemotherapy in patients with StageⅡorⅢbreast cancer had a similar effect as SLNB in non-neoadjuvant studies. SLNB was considered to be able to accurately predict the axillary lymph node status in patients with T2 primary tu- mor before neoadjuvant chemotherapy.