Testing of lymph nodes after chemo
Hi, ive spoken to surgeon and she suggests full axillery lymph node clearance. when I questioned why sentinel nodes not being tested first to see if they are clear, she said after chemo the patholo...
Forum Discussion
Thank you for your responses. I guess I just thought that the normal procedure regarding lymph node clearance was to test the nodes that the cancer would go to first, I am having a mastectomy so understood they would take these nodes out, get pathology results then decide if full node clearance was necessary, I hadn't heard that they do full clearance as that I thought was the old way and the new way was to take the first layer test them if there was cancer present then take them out. I was quite shocked to hear that now that I have had chemo for 6 months, that this was no longer the case. During ultrasound they did not see any nodes that were a red flag, neither did MRI which I have had prior to chemo and during.
chemo however did not shrink cancer significantly, so that would be a factor, as if any small cancer cells present maybe chemo has not killed them.
thanks
Christine
chemo however did not shrink cancer significantly, so that would be a factor, as if any small cancer cells present maybe chemo has not killed them.
thanks
Christine