Saturday, April 12, 2008

Newly Diagnosed Breast Cancer Patients Benefit from Use of Ultrasound-guided Fine Needle Aspiration of Lymph Nodes

Newswise — Ultrasound-guided fine needle aspiration (USFNA) of the lymph nodes is a safe, useful, and minimally invasive procedure for diagnosing metastatic disease in patients who are undergoing preoperative staging for breast cancer, according to a recent study conducted by researchers at the Rhode Island Hospital/Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University in Providence, RI.

“We wanted to determine which patients with newly diagnosed breast cancer would benefit most from preoperative fine needle aspiration of the axillary lymph nodes,” said Martha Mainiero, MD, lead author of the study. “This quick and minimally invasive procedure can assist the surgeon in determining what type of axillary surgery is best for patients with breast cancer. Unfortunately many centers do not routinely perform this procedure as there is not yet consensus on who will benefit from it,” she said.

source: Newswise

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