[의학신문·일간보사=오인규 기자] Traditional breast cancer surgery has removed a significant portion of the axillary lymph at the same time as surgery in the breast area. However, in the 2010 study ‘Z0011’ by the American Society of Oncology Surgeons, even if one or two metastatic lymph nodes were found in a breast cancer patient, if appropriate adjuvant treatment was to be administered, it was found that even without ‘lymph node dissection’, there was no hindrance to recurrence or survival. it has been revealed
However, as a result of analysis using big data by the Korean Breast Cancer Society, the need for selective implementation is suggested, suggesting the need for a selective implementation, as the study results show that the frequency of performing axillary ‘lymph node dissection’, which removes a significant portion of lymph nodes in Korean breast cancer patients, is still higher than in Europe.
These results were published by Professor Chi-Hwan Cha’s team of surgery at Hanyang University Hospital (corresponding author: Professor Min-Sung Jung), a world-renowned academic journal. It was revealed in the paper ‘Effect of the American Society of Oncology Surgeons (ACOSOG) ‘Z0011′ study on armpit surgery in Asian breast cancer patients’ published in the latest issue.
Professor Cha’s team studied the latest trends in armpit surgery through big data analysis on 7,500 patients who underwent partial mastectomy in Korea from 2011 to 2018 using data from the large-scale registration project of the Korean Breast Cancer Society. As a result, ‘lymph node dissection’ was found to have decreased significantly to 47.5% in 2018 compared to 76.6% in 2011.
In addition, it was found that the reduction rate of ‘lymph node dissection’ was 6 times slower than that of the Dutch cohort (2011-2015, 4,900 people), which recently published a large-scale study (annual rate of change in Korea and the Netherlands: 5.8% vs 37.2%, p<0.001) ). In particular, in Korea, it was confirmed that the more large the size of the tumor, the triple-negative subtype, or the presence of lymphatic vascular metastasis, the more axillary 'lymph node dissection' was performed.
Professor Chi-Hwan Cha said, “This study is the first Asian report on the trend of axillary lymph node surgery using big data. If discarded, lymphedema of the arm and loss of motor function and sensory may occur, reducing the quality of life.