- Title
- Investigating a Technologist-Driven Injection Technique in Lymphoscintigraphy at a Single Rural Center: A Retrospective Audit
- Creator
- Bamforth, Skyla; James, Daphne J.; Skilton, Christopher; Smith, Anthony
- Relation
- Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology Vol. 51, Issue 2
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.2967/jnmt.123.265442
- Publisher
- Society of Nuclear Medicine
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2023
- Description
- Our aim was to investigate the effectiveness of the technologist-driven injection technique of lymphoscintigraphy used at a rural hospital in Australia to identify the correct lymph node for sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) in early-stage breast cancer patients. Methods: A retrospective audit was conducted using imaging and medical record data from 145 eligible patients who underwent preoperative lymphoscintigraphy for SLNB at a single center throughout 2013 and 2014. The lymphoscintigraphy technique included a single periareolar injection with subsequent dynamic and static images as required. Descriptive statistics, sentinel node identification rates, and imaging-surgery concordance rates were generated from the data. Additionally, χ2 analysis was used to examine the relationships between age, previous surgical intervention, and injection site and time until a sentinel node is visualized. The technique and statistical results were directly compared against multiple similar studies in the literature. Results: The sentinel node identification rate was 99.3%, and the imaging-surgery concordance rate was 97.2%. The identification rate was significantly higher than those of similar studies in the literature, and concordance rates were similar across studies. The findings demonstrated that age (P = 0.508) and previous surgical intervention (P = 0.966) did not influence the time it takes to visualize a sentinel node. Injection site did appear to have a statistically significant effect (P = 0.001), with injections in the upper outer quadrant correlating with increased times between injection and visualization. Conclusion: The reported lymphoscintigraphy technique for identifying sentinel lymph nodes for SLNB in early-stage breast cancer patients can be justified as an accurate and effective method that is time-sensitive and has outcomes comparable to those of successful studies in the literature.
- Subject
- nuclear medicine; lymphoscintigraphy; breast cancer; audit
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1486734
- Identifier
- uon:51940
- Identifier
- ISSN:0091-4916
- Language
- eng
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