A fresh computerized tool can help...

A fresh computerized tool can help patients with breast cancer and their physicians determine whether the patient is likely to benefit from surgery to carry all the lymph nodes, according to a Dec 3 2003 moderns release from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center of the present day York. The tool called a nomogram, calculates the likelihood that breast cancer will spread from the sentinel lymph nodes to the axillary lymph nodes.

Researchers used information about the pathological features of the primary breast tumor and the sentinel Lymph node metastasis of 702 patients to disentangle nomogram calculations to predict the mien of additional disease in patients' axillary lymph nodes. They prospectively applied the nomogram to 373 patients with breast cancer that was lay opened through biopsy of the sentinel lymph nodes. The researchers base that the model accurately predicted the Likelihood of axillary lymph node metastasis to within a hardly any percentage points.

The nomogram uses pathological factors, similar as tumor size and emblem estrogen-receptor status, method of detection of sentinel lymph node metastasis, and the number of positive and negative sentinel lymph nodes, to determine the probability of additional lymph node metastasis. Approximately 50% of women whose breast cancer has spread to their sentinel lymph nodes will not have breast cancer in the other Lymph nodes.

Nomograms have been used to predict issues for patients with other malignancies, including prostate and renal cancer and sarcoma. The breast cancer nomogram is available clear from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center's web site at http://www.mskcc.org/nomograms/breastcancer.

recent Computerized Tool Predicts Chance of Breast Cancer's Spread from the Sentinel Lymph Nodes to Axillary Lymph Nodes (new release, just discovered York: Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Dec 3 2003) http://www .mskcc.org/mskcc/html/16959.cfm (accessed 2 Jan 2004)

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