[Jean]

Thanks Lani for the post.
There is a new member who posted today who was first dx. 1999
with a small cancer and neg. node. She has now experiencing a
recurrence and her dr. is surprised.

Melissa, although some surgeons consider SLN biopsey to be the standard of care there are some surgeons who do not perform the procedure.
That is why patients must be updated and knowledgable about their
treatment.

My feelings on SLN bipsey is the following: I do feel it should be performed to confirm whether the lymph is positive /or/negative.
Negative being favorable. But strangely enough I am not 100%
comfortable with a negative results. The all over path report must be
understood to make clear treatment decisions, such as Hopeful with
her low KI-67 levels...and myself with high levels.

I believe the strongest advantage of SLN biopsey is not having to have a
standard LN removal, which involves removing most of the nodes in the area of the tumor.

From what I was told back in '05, (maybe at that time surgeons were not doing many) it was a bit tricky to locate etc. even with the dye.
That one would want to have a surgeon who does them often and is expert in this.

This SLN mapping was started back in 1977 and began to be
used in 1994 in breast cancer....one has to ponder why these procedures are taking so long to be "Standard of Care"?

Regards,
jean