MÉTODO DE AMPLIFICACIÓN DE ÁCIDO NUCLEICO EN UN PASO EN EL GANGLIO CENTINELA DEL CÁNCER DE MAMA

SUMMARY OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to confirm the reliability and the usefulness of the one step nucleic acid amplification assay in routine clinical use for sentinel lymph node biopsy of breast cancer patients. METHODS: The patients with diagnostic of Tis-T2N0M0 breast cancer who underwent comprised the study cohort. A whole sentinel lymph node was examined intra-operatively with the assay. For the patients who underwent axillary dissection, nonsentinel nodes were examined with the routine pathologic examination. RESULTS: In total, 139 biopsy of sentinel node from 72 patients were analyzed. Sentinel lymphatic nodes metastases were detected with greater sensitivity by the OSNA assay than by pathologic examination, as expected from the difference in the size of the specimens examined. Patients who had sentinel node metastases assessed with the OSNA assay proved to harbour non-sentinel node metastases with an overall risk ratio of 35 %. The risk of non-sentinel node metastases was significantly lower for the patients who had positive sentinel nodes assessed as micrometastases than for those who had sentinel nodes assessed as macrometastases. CONCLUSIONS: In this work we conclude that the OSNA assay can be used for the routine clinical sentinel node, and its assessment for the volume of metastasis may be a powerful predictive factor for non-sentinel node biopsy metastasis. Further studies with more patients are needed to confirm the usefulness of this assay for selection in the clinical setting of patients who do not need axillary dissection.