Neoplasms

Skin and Connective Tissue Diseases

All Conditions

Breast Neoplasms

Breast Diseases

Skin Diseases

Patients without proven axillary involved nodes will undergo SLN biopsy and a complete axillary level I-II lymphadenectomy only in the case of detection failure or involved SLN and a SLN biopsy alone in the others cases. Patients of this last group will be followed 5 years in order to evaluate the risk of axillary relapse without lymphadenectomy.

group 1 : patients with proven involved axillary nodes will undergo SLN biopsy and complete level I-II axillary lymphadenectomy.

Group 2 : Patients without proven axillary involved nodes will undergo SLNB and a complete axillary level I-II lymphadenectomy only in the case of detection failure or involved SLN and a SLNB alone in the others cases. Patients of this last group will be followed 5 years in order to evaluate the risk of axillary relapse without lymphadenectomy.

Axillar Sentinel lymph node biopsy

group 1 : patients with proven involved axillary nodes will undergo SLNB and complete level I-II axillary lymphadenectomy.

SLNB and complete level I-II axillary lymphadenectomy

Jean-Marc CLASSE, MD

Neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) is frequently proposed to patients with large tumours that can be operated in order to increase the chances of breast conservation. After NAC, patients are operated with systematic axillary lymph node dissection (ALND), although more than half of these patients do not have lymph node involvement. These results lead us to consider the indication of the sentinel lymph node (SLN) technique after NAC in order to avoid unnecessary ALND in patients whose SLN is free of involvement.

We need to validate the SLN technique after NAC in patients who have proven lymph node involvement prior to NAC.

GANEA2 is a new trial based on patient treated for a large breast tumor with proven axillary involved nodes. Patients enrolled in this trial will have first an axillary sonography with fine needle punction in case of suspected nodes before NAC. This primary evaluation allow to determine two groups of patients : group 1 (pN+) : patients with proven involved axillary nodes and group 2, patients without proven axillary involved nodes (cN0). Patients of group 1, will undergo SLNB and complete level I-II axillary lymphadenectomy. Patients of group 2 will undergo SLNB and a complete axillary level I-II lymphadenectomy only in the case of detection failure or involved SLN and a SLNB alone in the others cases. Patients of this last group will be followed 5 years in order to evaluate the risk of axillary relapse without lymphadenectomy.

Early breast cancer patients treated with neo-adjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) were included. Before NAC, patients with cytologically proven node involvement were allocated into the pN1 group, other patient were allocated into the cN0 group. After NAC, pN1 group patients underwent sentinel lymph node (SLN) and axillary lymph node dissection (ALND); cN0 group patients underwent SLN and ALND only in case of mapping failure or SLN involvement.

Sentinel Lymph Node Detection After Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy for Large Operable Breast Cancer

Evaluation of Sentinel Lymph Node Detection After Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy for Large Operable Breast Cancer

Ratio of the number of FN cases to the total number of patients with at least one lymph node involved, sentinel or not.

a FN case was defined as a patient with a successful mapping, SLN(s) without any metastasis, and a metastasis in at least one node from the ALND

Percentage of patients with SLN detected and isolated intraoperatively

The Sataloff classification assesses the response of the NAC on the breast tissue.

TA: total or almost total therapeutic effect. TB: therapeutic effect \> 50%. TC: \< 50% therapeutic effect but obvious effect. TD: no therapeutic effect

The Sataloff classification assesses the response of the NAC on the lymph nodes NA: clear therapeutic effect, no metastases. NB: no therapeutic effect, no metastases. NC: aspects of therapeutic effect, but presence of metastases. ND: no therapeutic effect, viable metastases.

Recurrence observed groupe 2 patients (cN0) whitout ALND

Institut Cancerologie de l'Ouest

Linda H Zetterlund, PhD

Fuat Celebioglu, PhD

Jan Frisell, Professor

The purpose of this study is to investigate if sentinel lymph node biopsy is a reliable staging tool for breast cancer patients planned for neoadjuvant chemotherapy (=before breast surgery) and if, in that case, it is safe to omit axillary lymph node dissection if the sentinel lymph node is free of metastasis.

Sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) was introduced in the late 1990´s and has become standard procedure for staging of the axilla in early stage breast cancer associated with significantly less arm morbidity than axillary lymph node dissection (ALND).

Neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) given before breast surgery is indicated for locally advanced breast cancer but is increasingly used for early stage breast cancer with the purpose of downstaging the tumor and thereby possibly enabling breast conserving surgery. Traditionally, the standard axillary staging tool has been ALND although up to 50 per cent of the patients at diagnosis do not have any metastases in their axillary lymph nodes. In addition, NAC can eradicate metastases in the axillary lymph nodes in up to 40 per cent of the patients.

SLNB has therefore been evaluated in the neoadjuvant setting both before and after NAC but is still controversial and the timing debated.

This is a Swedish prospective multi-institutional study without any comparison goup. The comparison is between the findings in the SLNB and the following ALND performed after NAC in all patients.

If the patient is clinically node-negative at diagnosis a SLNB is performed before (without frozen section) and after NAC (substudy I). The reasons for repeating SLNB both before and after NAC are 1) to find out what happens during NAC 2) if it is possible to identify a repeat SLNB and 3) if it is reliable.

If the patient is node-positive at diagnosis (cytologically verified lymph node metastasis) SLNB is performed after NAC together with the breast operation and ALND (substudy II). When SLNB is performed after NAC, the sentinel lymph nodes are also analysed with frozen section in order to validate the method after chemotherapy. Both blue dye and radiolabelled isotope for localisation of the sentinel lymph node is recommended but lymphoscintigraphy is optional.

All consecutive clinically node-negative (or with unclear nodal status after ultrasound and cytology) patients planned for NAC will have oral and written information about the study by the responsible surgeon. After accepting to participate, the patient is asked to sign a written consent. Patients with a cytologically verified lymph node metastasis/es at diagnosis will be informed and asked to participate in substudy II after completion of NAC.

According to the statistical analysis, and with an expected loss of 10 per cent, a sample size of 220 patients is needed in substudy I to show that the false negative rate is less than 10 per cent. If we include 200 patients and 50 per cent are lymph node positive at diagnosis then the estimation of false negative rate will be based on 100 individuals. If we estimate the true false negative rate to be 8 per cent, then the precision with 80 per cent power will be +/- 7 per cent units (2-sided test with 95 per cent confidence interval).

The Central Contact (PI) is responsible for data collection, management and analysis. Each protocol will be sent together with a written consent and copies of all relevant histopathological reports to the PI, who will control for missing or incongruent data and if so, ask the responsible investigator on that institution/hospital to complement the missing data from the patients journal (copies of medical records or histopathological reports).

Sentinel Node Biopsy Before and/or After Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy in Breast Cancer

The rate of patients with no metastasis/ses in their sentinel lymph node/s before neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) but metastasis/ses in the nodes from the axillary lymph node dissection performed after NAC will be analysed. In substudy II we also investigate the false negative rate in sentinel lymph node biopsies performed after NAC if the patient had positive lymph nodes at diagnosis.

The number of successful sentinel lymph node biopsies among the total number of attempted biopsies. Will be analyses both before and after neoadjuvant chemotherapy.

Study title	NCT ID	Conditions	Interventions	Eligibility	Organization	Link
Sentinel Lymph Node Detection After Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy for Large Operable Breast Cancer	NCT01221688	Breast Cancer	Axillar Sentine... SLNB and comple...	18 Years -	Institut Cancerologie de l'Ouest
Sentinel Node Biopsy Before and/or After Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy in Breast Cancer	NCT02031042	Breast Cancer		18 Years -	Stockholm South General Hospital

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