Lymph node visibility in imaging
Hello, I've been reading these forums for a few weeks and finding them very helpful - thank you to all that share their knowledge. I'm trying to understand more about lymph nodes and imaging. For my backstory... My ultrasound showed nothing suspicious in my lymph nodes. A month ago I had a lumpectomy for IBC (1cm ER+ PR+ HER2- grade 1) and sentinel node biopsy where they found spread to 3 of 4 lymph nodes including one with 0.3mm of extranodal spread. On Monday I had CT and whole body bone scans. Today the surgeon rang to say the scans were all clear however the next step is more surgery to remove 12-20 lymph nodes. This sounds like axillary lymph node dissection. I'll get the reports and paperwork next week to make better sense of it and then I'll chat to my breast care nurse. We're a bit puzzled over how my lymph nodes are so involved for such a small grade 1 tumour. I'm wondering whether my involved lymph nodes should have shown up on the ultrasound, and whether nothing showing up on the post-surgery CT is a useful sign that other nodes might not be involved. Does anyone have experience of lymph node involvement without it showing up with imaging? Or do they show up on some types of imaging but not others? Or did you have axillary lymph node dissection even with a clear CT scan?
