Background: This prospective study was performed to ascertain the added benefit of lymphoscintigraphy to a standard method of intraoperative lymphatic mapping and sentinel node biopsy for breast cancer.

Methods: Patients with invasive breast cancer were injected with ^99mTc sulfur colloid prior to sentinel node biopsy; preoperative lymphoscintigraphy was then performed in half of the patient population.

Results: Sentinel node identification was possible in 45 of 50 patients (90%). All 14 patients (31%) with axillary nodal metastases had at least one histologically positive sentinel node (0% false negative rate). Lymphoscintigraphy revealed sentinel nodes in 17 of the 24 patients (70.8%) imaged. All 17 of these patients had one or more axillary sentinel nodes identified using intraoperative lymphatic mapping. In addition, 5 of 7 patients with a negative preoperative lymphoscintogram had an axillary sentinel lymph node(s) identified intraoperatively. None of the tumors showed drainage to the internal mammary lymph node chain by lymphoscintigraphy despite the fact that there were 5 patients with inner quadrant tumors. There was no significant advantage with respect to sentinel lymph node localization (91.7% versus 88.5%, P = not significant) or false negative rate (0%, both groups, P = not significant) in the group undergoing preoperative lymphoscintigraphy when compared with the patients in whom lymphoscintigraphy was not performed.

Conclusions: Preoperative lymphoscintigraphy adds little additional information to intraoperative lymphatic mapping, and its routine use is not justified.