The role of sentinel node biopsy in breast cancer management: an overview.

Regional lymph nodes surgical management is an integral part of breast cancer therapy. One of the most important therapeutic problems is the risk of surgical treatment which is too wide or inadequate due to the lack of correct presurgical information on the conditions of regional lymph nodes. For melanoma the problem was solved combining surgical accuracy with the slightest surgical resection, using sentinel node biopsy.

A study of sentinel node biopsy in T1 breast cancer treatment: experience of 48 cases.

Axillary clearance in breast cancer has been proven to be unnecessary in more than 50% of cases. Sentinel node biopsy (SNB) is a new technique that can be used to avoid unnecessary axillary clearance in breast cancer surgery. Our integrated team, consisting of surgeons, pathologists and nuclear medicine physicians, studied 48 cases of T1 breast cancer with lymphoscintigraphy-guided SNB.

[Cystic disease of the breast. Ten-year experience].

Cystic breast disease is a relatively widespread pathological condition in the female sex, it has an incidence of around 7% and predominantly affects women aged between 40 and 50 years old. The authors report their experience based on the observation of 1046 cases taken from a series consisting of over 30,000 examinations. Patients were studied following a standardised diagnostic protocol including breast examination, breast scan and, depending on the patient's age or the presence of pathological findings, mammography.

Depression secondary to tumors in patients who underwent surgery for mammary carcinoma: psycho-pharmaceutical and psychotherapeutic care.

The Authors repeated a pilot psycho-social research they had already undertaken in this University in 1986-1987, with an increased number of patients, administering a psycho-therapeutic treatment to patients who had undergone surgery for mammary carcinoma and correlating the evolution of the tumoral disease with the role of depression and the immune system. These 50 patients were compared to another randomly chosen control-group of 50 patients. Both groups were homogeneous as regards medical-surgical and psycho-social parameters and had routine oncological care.