Impact of BMI on Preoperative Axillary Ultrasound Assessment in Patients With Early Breast Cancer.
BACKGROUND
The accuracy of axillary ultrasound (AUS) with fine-needle aspiration with varying patient body mass index (BMI) is still unclear. The aim of our study was to evaluate whether the US features of axillary lymph nodes changes with BMI of patients.


PATIENTS AND METHODS
A retrospective review was performed involving 144 out of 270 patients with early breast cancer who underwent breast surgery with sentinel lymph node biopsy. Diagnostic efficacy of AUS in preoperative axillary nodal staging was assessed in relation to BMI.


RESULTS
Negative predictive values of AUS for the overweight and obese groups were statistically significantly lower compared to the normal/underweight group (p=0.02 and p=0.003, respectively). Additionally, Spearman's correlation coefficient R between BMI and positive sentinel lymph node biopsy was 0.257, suggesting a significantly positive linear relationship between the two variables in the cohort overall.


CONCLUSION
Our results demonstrate how in our cohort the negative predictive value of AUS was significantly influenced by adipose tissue and that the selection of the most suitable instrumental diagnostic technique might contribute to improving heterogeneous results.
['Macaione|Ina|I|', 'Galvano|Antonio|A|', 'Graceffa|Giuseppa|G|', 'Lupo|Simona|S|', 'Latteri|Mario|M|', 'Russo|Antonio|A|', 'Vieni|Salvatore|S|', 'Cipolla|Calogero|C|']
D001365:Axilla D015992:Body Mass Index D001943:Breast Neoplasms D005260:Female D006801:Humans D057234:Preoperative Period D014463:Ultrasonography
BMI axillary ultrasound breast cancer predictive value