User-friendly tool can predict risk of breast Ca metastasis

A user-friendly nomogram can help answer the questions of newly diagnosed breast cancer patients about their patient-specific likelihood of developing sentinel lymph node metastasis, according to a report published in the Aug. 20 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Kimberly J. Van Zee, MD, of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York City, and colleagues analyzed data from 3,786 sentinel lymph node biopsies to develop a model to predict the presence of breast cancer metastasis. From this they created a user-friendly prediction model, or nomogram.

The factors associated with sentinel lymph node metastasis were: age; tumor type, size, and location; lymphovascular invasion; multifocality; and estrogen and progesterone receptors. The nomogram was able to accurately discriminate the risk factors in individual cases and calculate the probability of metastasis to the lymph nodes.

Bevilacqua JL, Kattan MW, Fey JV, et al. Doctor, what are my chances of having a positive sentinel node? A validated nomogram for risk estimation. J Clin Oncol. 2007;25:3670-3679.