[Immunolymphoscintigraphy. A new procedure for noninvasive lymph node staging illustrated by the example of breast cancer].

In the course of a prospective study 43 women underwent axillary immunolymphoscintigraphy (ILS) shortly before a planned operation for suspected carcinoma of the breast. The aim was to test the feasibility of this procedure for the noninvasive staging of lymph-nodes. Three antibodies were used: HMFG-1 (3 patients), HMFG-2 (13) and 3C6F9 (27). The diagnosis was confirmed in 35 patients. They underwent radical mastectomy with removal of the lymph-nodes. There were marked differences in the usefulness of HMFG-2 and 3C6F9 for ILS in these circumstances. There were too few patients to evaluate HMFG-1. Sensitivity and specificity of the test were 0.57 and 0.83, respectively, for HMFG-1 and 0.83 and 0.93 for 3C6F9.