Stained region lymph node biopsy for axillary restaging after neoadjuvant systemic therapy in node-positive breast cancer: a cohort study

BACKGROUND: Accurate assessment of axillary lymph node status after neoadjuvant systemic therapy (NST) is essential for de-escalating surgery in node-positive breast cancer. Although various axillary surgeries based on sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) are widely reported, they still have limitations in this setting. Since metastatic lymph nodes inherently encompass sentinel nodes, we hypothesized that directly marking and retrieving these nodes could enable reliable restaging without SLNB. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this single-arm, prospective cohort study, patients with pathologically confirmed axillary metastasis underwent ultrasound-guided injection of carbon nanoparticle suspension into the most suspicious lymph node(s) before NST. After completing NST, stained region lymph node biopsy (SrLNB) was performed to retrieve the marked nodes, followed by completion axillary lymph node dissection (ALND), without performing SLNB. The detection rate and false-negative rate (FNR) of SrLNB were evaluated to determine its feasibility. RESULTS: Between September 2020 and December 2022, 159 patients were included. The axillary pathological complete response (pCR) rate was 40.9% (65/159). SrLNB achieved a detection rate of 100% (159/159) and an overall FNR of 5.3% (5/94). The FNR remained within the 10% safety threshold across all patient subgroups. CONCLUSION: SrLNB is a feasible, economical, and straightforward technique for assessing axillary response after NST. With its high detection rate and acceptable FNR, SrLNB represents an alternative SLNB-independent strategy for axillary restaging in patients with initially node-positive breast cancer.