Search

Purpose: Several international trials are currently investigating accelerated partial breast irradiation (APBI) for patients with early-stage breast cancer. According to existing guidelines, patients with lymphatic vessel invasion (LVI) do not qualify for APBI. D2-40 (podoplanin) significantly increases the frequency of LVI detection compared with conventional hematoxylin and eosin (HE) staining in early-stage breast cancer. Our purpose was to retrospectively assess the hypothetical change in management from APBI to whole breast radiotherapy with the application of D2-40. Patients and Methods: Immunostaining with D2-40 was performed on 254 invasive breast tumors of 247 patients. The following criteria were used to determine the eligibility for APBI: invasive ductal adenocarcinoma of ≤3 cm, negative axillary node status (N0), and unifocal disease. Of the 247 patients, 74 with available information concerning LVI, as detected by D2-40 immunostaining and routine HE staining, formed our study population. Results: Using D2-40, our results demonstrated a significantly greater detection rate (p = .031) of LVI compared with routine HE staining. LVI was correctly identified by D2-40 (D2-40–positive LVI) in 10 (13.5%) of 74 tumors. On routine HE staining, 4 tumors (5.4%) were classified as HE-positive LVI. Doublestaining of these specimens with D2-40 unmasked false-positive LVI status in 2 (50%) of the 4 tumors. According to the current recommendations for APBI, immunostaining with D2-40 would have changed the clinical management from APBI to whole breast radiotherapy in 8 (10.8%) of 74 patients and from whole breast radiotherapy to APBI in 2 patients (2.7%). Conclusion: These data support the implementation of D2-40 immunostaining in the routine workup to determine a patient''s eligibility for APBI. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Purpose: Accelerated partial breast irradiation (APBI) after breast-conserving therapy is currently under investigation in prospective randomized studies. Multifocality and multicentricity are exclusion criteria for APBI. Preoperative breast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can detect ipsilateral and contralateral invasive tumor foci or ductal carcinoma in situ in addition to conventional diagnostic methods (clinical examination, mammography, and ultrasonography). The objective of this retrospective study was to evaluate the impact of preoperative MRI on patient selection for APBI. Methods and Materials: From 2002 to 2007, a total of 579 consecutive, nonselected patients with newly diagnosed early-stage breast cancer received preoperative breast MRI in addition to conventional imaging studies at the Bonn University Breast Cancer Center. In retrospect, 113 patients would have met the criteria for APBI using conventional imaging workup (clinical tumor size ≤3 cm; negative axillary lymph node status; unifocal disease; no evidence of distant metastases; no invasive lobular carcinoma, ductal and lobular carcinoma in situ, or Paget’s disease). We analyzed the amount of additional ipsilateral and contralateral tumor foci detected by MRI. Results: MRI detected additional tumor foci in 8.8% of patients eligible for APBI (11 tumor foci in 10 of 113 patients), either ipsilateral (n = 7, 6.2%) or contralateral (n = 4, 3.5%). In 1 patient, MRI helped detect additional tumor focus both ipsilaterally and contralaterally. Conclusions: Preoperative breast MRI is able to identify additional tumor foci in a clinically relevant number of cases in this highly selected group of patients with low-risk disease and may be useful in selecting patients for APBI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]