Lymphoscintigraphy and triangulated body marking for morbidity reduction during sentinel node biopsy in breast cancer

Table 2 Updated comparisons of average chronic pain and numbness/paresthesia morbidity between LS groups (+) performing lymphoscintigraphy and non LS groups (-) not performing lymphoscintigraphy in patients undergoing SLNB using radiotracer or using only dye. In general, studies using lymphoscintigraphy continue to have much lower levels of chronic sensory morbidity. Updated data by incorporation of four new references [21,22,23,24].

	Lymphoscintigraphy (+) Performed			Lymphoscintigraphy (-) Not Performed
*Morbidity (Mor)	Mor (%)	Total Pt (N)	References	Mor (%)	Total Pt (N)	References	^#p-value
Pain (>9m)	14.32%	1508	1,2,4,9,10,11,14,20,22,24	28.67%	143	6	< 0.0001
Numbness/Paresthesia (>9m)	9.22%	1052	1,4,9,11,13,14,17,20,23,24	23.17%	315	3,6,18,21^t	< 0.0001

*Adapted, revised, updated and used with permission from Kim SC et al: Using the intraoperative hand held probe without lymphoscintigraphy or using only dye correlates with higher sensory morbidity following sentinel lymph node biopsy in breast cancer: A review of the literature. World J Surg Oncol 2005, 3:64. [41].
^tUse of LS is variable/suboptimal [21]. See text for details.
^#Statistics used to generate the p value: Fisher's exact test (2-tailed). A result was considered to be significant only if the p-value was lower than 0.05.