Predicting metastasis in clinically negative axillary lymph nodes with minimum apparent diffusion coefficient value in luminal A-like breast cancer

• DOI: 10.1007/s12282-019-00969-0
• Publication Date: 2019-04-01T13:03:54Z
• Authors: Fumi Kato; Kohsuke Kudo; Hiroko Yamashita; Motoi Baba; Ai Shimizu; Noriko Oyama-Manabe; Rumiko Kinoshita; Ruijiang Li; Hiroki Shirato
• Keywords: Adult; Receptor, ErbB-2; 490; Breast Neoplasms; Sensitivity and Specificity; 03 medical and health sciences; Breast cancer; Magnetic resonance imaging; 0302 clinical medicine; Diffusion-weighed imaging; Humans; Aged; Retrospective Studies; Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy; Carcinoma, Ductal, Breast; Middle Aged; Axillary lymph node metastasis; 3. Good health; Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Ki-67 Antigen; ROC Curve; Receptors, Estrogen; Area Under Curve; Lymphatic Metastasis; Axilla; Female; Lymph Nodes; Receptors, Progesterone

We investigated the usefulness of the minimum ADC value of primary breast lesions for predicting axillary lymph node (LN) status in luminal A-like breast cancers with clinically negative nodes in comparison with the mean ADC.Forty-four luminal A-like breast cancers without axillary LN metastasis at preoperative clinical evaluation, surgically resected with sentinel LN biopsy, were retrospectively studied. Mean and minimum ADC values of each lesion were measured and statistically compared between LN positive (n = 12) and LN negative (n = 32) groups. An ROC curve was drawn to determine the best cutoff value to differentiate LN status. Correlations between mean and minimum ADC values and the number of metastatic axillary LNs were investigated.Mean and minimum ADC values of breast lesions with positive LN were significantly lower than those with negative LN (mean 839.9 ± 110.9 vs. 1022.2 ± 250.0 × 10- 6 mm2/s, p = 0.027, minimum 696.7 ± 128.0 vs. 925.0 ± 257.6 × 10- 6 mm2/s, p = 0.004). The sensitivity and NPV using the best cutoff value from ROC using both mean and minimum ADC were 100%. AUC of the minimum ADC (0.784) was higher than that of the mean ADC (0.719). Statistically significant negative correlations were observed between both mean and minimum ADCs and number of positive LNs, with stronger correlation to minimum ADC than mean ADC.The minimum ADC value of primary breast lesions predicts axillary LN metastasis in luminal A-like breast cancer with clinically negative nodes, with high sensitivity and high NPV.