ObjectiveTo analyze the predictive value of preoperative contrast-enhanced ultrasound in sentinel lymph node metastasis of breast cancer.

MethodsThe contrast-enhanced ultrasound in 276 patients with breast cancer were performed to find sentinel lymph nodes.The results between pathological examination and contrast-enhanced ultrasound were compared.The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and accuracy of contrast-enhanced ultrasound in all cases were calculated.

ResultsOf the 276 patients, 124 tumors were located in the left breast and 152 tumors were located in the right breast.There were 100 cases in the outer upper quadrant, 47 cases in the outer lower quadrant, 60 cases in the inner upper quadrant and 69 cases in the inner lower quadrant.All patients were pathologically confirmed as primary breast cancer, which included 183 cases of invasive ductal carcinoma, 65 cases of intraductal carcinoma in situ, 16 cases of mucinous carcinoma and 12 cases of other cancers.The diameter of the primary tumor was 0.6-4.9 cm, and the diameter of the sentinel lymph node was 0.3-3.2 cm.A total of 497 sentinel lymph nodes were detected by preoperative contrast-enhanced ultrasound, and a total of 518 sentinel lymph nodes were removed by operation.The detection rate of preoperative contrast-enhanced ultrasound of sentinel lymph nodes was 95.95%(497/518).The results of pathological examination confirmed that 120 nodes were metastatic sentinel nodes.Seventy-three patients with positive and 203 patients with negative sentinel lymph nodes were predicted using the preoperative contrast-enhanced ultrasound.The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and accuracy of predicting sentinel lymph nodes were 76.12%, 89.47%, 69.86%, 92.12% and 86.23%, respectively.

ConclusionsIn order to get the best predicting results in the sentinel lymph node metastasis of breast cancer, the contrast-enhanced ultrasound should be combined with other tracing methods.