Kefah Mokbel, Chair of Breast Cancer Surgery at London Breast Institute and Honorary Professor of Medicine at Cardiff University School of Medicine, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Targeted Axillary Dissection After Neoadjuvant Therapy: Further Validation from a Major Meta-Analysis
Colleagues from Mansoura University have published an updated systematic review and meta-analysis in npj Breast Cancer, providing the most comprehensive evidence to date on targeted axillary dissection (TAD) in initially node-positive breast cancer patients achieving clinical nodal downstaging after neoadjuvant systemic therapy.
Across 59 observational studies, TAD demonstrated:
- Pooled identification rate: 95.1% (95% CI: 93.2–96.5%)
- Pooled false-negative rate: 6.37% (95% CI: 5.02–8.04%; I² = 0.0%)
- Overall diagnostic accuracy: 94.68% (95% CI: 91.70–96.63%)
- Targeted–sentinel node concordance: 73.34%
Crucially, performance was consistent across all marking techniques (clip, carbon, magnetic, radioactive seeds) and localisation methods — supporting implementation using locally available technologies.
These findings firmly establish TAD as superior to SLNB alone in this setting and support its adoption as a standard surgical approach for appropriately selected patients.
I am pleased that two of our previously published systematic reviews and pooled analyses were cited in this work, contributing to the evidence base that has shaped current practice.”
Title: Targeted axillary dissection in breast cancer patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Authors: Mohammed Abdelaziz, Sagad Mohamed, Mohammed Nagi, Ibrahim Alawadi, Youstina Mohsen, Sohaila Ibrahim, Radwa Abdelsattar, Asmaa Abdelaziz, Mohamed Yasser, Sherif Wael, Hend Abdelgawad, Magdy Shehab, Khaled Abdelwahab, Omar Hamdy
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