Pathological examination with two-millimetre serial sectioning for sentinel lymph node biopsies in breast cancer.

AIMS: To compare enhanced pathology with serial sectioning and the transcription-reverse transcription concerted reaction (TRC) for detecting sentinel node (SN) metastasis in breast cancer cases. METHODS: In total, 115 SN samples from 32 breast cancer cases were investigated by pathological examination with 2.0-mm serial sectioning and by quantitative analysis of carcinoembryonic antigen messenger RNA with the TRC. RESULTS: The results were concordant in 98.3% of these cases. Two histologically metastatic nodes tested negative by TRC, whereas none tested positive by TRC alone. CONCLUSION: Pathological examination with 2-mm sectioning showed superior performance to TRC under the study conditions.