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Z Franchini

Publications and source records attributed to Z Franchini.

3 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2005

Axillary sentinel lymph nodes in breast cancer: a single lymphatic pathway drains the entire mammary gland.

AIM: To report the pattern of lymphatic mapping following intrasubdermal injections of radiocolloid and of blue dye in different sites of the breast. METHODS: Prior to surgery 137 breast cancer patients underwent intrasubdermal injection of 30-50 MBq 99mTc-colloidal albumin over the tumour site (ISI group). Ten minutes before surgery, 2 ml patent blue was injected in the subareolar area (SAI group) in 117/137 patients, while 20 patients received intrasubdermal blue-dye in the quadrant opposite the tumour site (OQI group). The different injection routes were considered concordant when the hottest sLN was also blue. RESULTS: In 134/137 patients radiocolloid drained to one or more axillary nodes, while blue nodes were found in 98/117 SAI patients and in 17/20 OQI patients. Multiple hot nodes were found in 63/134 cases and multiple blue nodes in 35/115. In patients in whom both tracers reached the axilla, the hottest node was also blue in 108/115 cases (93/98 SAI and 15/17 OQI patients). In the seven discordant cases, the hottest node was not blue, but in two cases the blue node was also radioactive. CONCLUSIONS: Superficial lymphatic drainage from the breast most frequently merges to a single axillary lymph node, irrespective of the site of tracer injection. In a few cases different injection sites identify different, often closely interconnected sLNs.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Axillary recurrence after negative sentinel lymph node biopsy without axillary dissection: a study on 479 breast cancer patients.

AIMS: To determine the axillary recurrence rate in breast cancer patients with negative sentinel lymph nodes (SLN) who did not undergo further axillary lymph node dissection (ALND), and to establish whether this conservative axillary approach leads to an increased recourse to diagnostic axillary biopsy during the follow-up period because of the clinical suspicion of nodal recurrence. METHODS: In 479 patients, operated on for early breast cancer between 1998 and 2002 in five institutions, SLN biopsy was negative and no further axillary surgery was performed. SLN was localized using subdermal injection with 30-50 MBq of 99m-Tc-colloidal albumin. Follow-up controls were performed at 6-monthly intervals. RESULTS: The mean number of SLNs removed was 1.4 per patient. Most patients (90.6%) were given adjuvant systemic therapy, based on the primary tumour characteristics. At a median follow-up of 35.8 months, no clinical axillary recurrence was found. No patient underwent surgical axillary biopsy for suspicious clinical or ultrasonographic findings. CONCLUSIONS: Our results confirm that SLN biopsy without ALND in SLN-negative patients with early breast cancer is not followed by clinically evident axillary recurrence in the short-term.

Adult↗