History of diagnosis
Breast Surgeon Peter Jones, whose wife Sue, also a Breast Surgeon, is on the team, explains that in years gone by, patients would have had a fairly big operation focused on the area around the armpits. Complications might have included arm swelling, fluid retention, and shoulder stiffness. Then doctors developed a less invasive way of identifying the presence of cancerous cells. They introduced a ‘sentinel lymph node biopsy’.  Jones says that, ‘“sentinel” is a bit of a strange term. It’s the “guard node”. It’s the first node which the cancer cells would travel to if they are going to spread up to the armpit.’ Doctors injected different dyes, and were able to see which nodes were potentially cancerous.  The downsides are that if the removed lymph node does prove cancerous, surgeons need to do another operation to take the other lymph nodes out.

Reduces stress
‘Women hate coming back and being told that they have got a lymph node problem,’ says Jones, ‘it’s a double-whammy. They’ve been through being told that they have cancer and need to have an operation. And then they are told it has spread to the lymph nodes and they need to come and have another operation. My wife empathises what a blow it is to women. They are often going through that journey quite smoothly and this might be the first big hiccup really.’ The new technique involves injecting microbubbles into tissue. ‘Microbubbles,’ says Jones, ‘have been used as a “contrast-enhancing agent” for ultrasound for many years. Given intravenously, they’ve been used to look at, for example, the heart and the liver.” Using a special ultrasound machine the radiologist can see the bubbles travel to the sentinel lymph node. A fine needle biopsy is performed and if it’s positive all the lymph glands can be removed in one operation.’ The simplicity of this procedure will help reduce the extra stress and anxiety of cancer patients.