Abstract:

Objective: Evaluation of the surgical margins in ROLL mastectomy materials, and assessment of the safety and the usability of the intra-operative consultation and frozen section for the evaluation of the sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB).     Methods: Mastectomy materials reported in our laboratories between July 1, 2015 and August 1, 2017 have been documented, and the cases with frozen sections have been detected. Frozen section reports, and permanent section reports were compared to evaluate the conformity between the SLNB situation and the ROLL mastectomy surgical margins’ situation, and their contribution to the treatment.     Results: Out of the 1278 mastectomy cases in the described time interval, there were 657 ROLL mastectomies. In 30 of them intraoperative surgical margin assessment has been done. Because in one of them the surgical margin was positive, and 6 of them had tumor closer than 1 mm to surgical margins, re-excision had to be done. Sentinel lymph nodes were evaluated with frozen section in 233 of the cases, metastasis was seen in 28% (n=72) of them and axillary dissection was done to all of them.    Conclusion: In women undergoing breast conserving surgery for the treatment of the breast cancer, frozen section evaluation provides better surgical margin negativity and reduces the need for the re-excision operations. Similarly, frozen section evaluation of the SLNB decreases the frequency of the axillary dissection reoperations. 

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