Detection of Axillary Lymph Node Involvement in Early-Stage Breast Cancer: Comparison between Staging 18F-2-Fluoro-2-Deoxy-D-Glucose Positron Emission Tomography-Computed Tomography Scans, Mammography, and Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy.

Aims: The aim of this study was to evaluate the role of 18F-2-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose (18F-FDG) positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET-CT) scan in the detection of axillary lymph node (ALN) involvement and comparison with sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) in operable early-stage breast cancer (EBC). Settings and Design: It is a retrospective analysis of staging PET-CT scan of EBC. Methods: A total of 128 patients with histopathologically proven breast cancer (BC) were included in the study. Preoperative mammography supplemented with ultrasonography and staging 18F-FDG PET-CT scan was done for all patients. Surgery was done within 30 (mean ± standard deviation = 13.8 ± 10.5) days of staging. SLNB was performed in patients without PET-positive ALNs. All patients with positive sentinel nodes and PET-positive ALNs underwent axillary lymph node dissection (ALND). Statistical Analysis Used: The comparison between categorical variables was made by Chi-square/Fisher's exact test as applicable. For continuous variables comparisons, Student's t-test and one-way analysis of variance tests were used. Results: Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) of PET-CT scan for detection of ALN involvement were 41.7%, 93.2%, 92.1%, and 45.6%, respectively. Sensitivity, specificity, PPV, and NPV of mammography were 84.5%, 54.5%, 78.0%, and 68.6%, respectively. Sixteen out of 46 (34.7%) patients with negative ALNs in PET-CT scan finally showed involvement in histopathology report after SLNB resulting in upstage of the disease. The size of tumor deposits in sentinel nodes was significantly smaller than PET-positive ALNs (P = 0.01). Our observations correlate with the results of earlier studies published in the literature. Conclusions: 18F-FDG PET-CT scan cannot substitute SLNB for ALN screening in EBC. The limitations are most marked in smaller and micrometastatic tumor deposits in ALNs and may be attributed to limitations of PET resolution. However, PET-positive nodes showed good specificity for disease involvement in our study. Therefore, ALND can safely be performed by omitting SLNB in such cases.

Efficacy of cyclin-dependent kinase 4/6 inhibitors in patients with metastatic hormone positive breast cancer: a single institutional study from India.

Purpose: Cyclin-dependent kinase 4/6 (CDK4/6) inhibitors have shown marked benefit in the treatment of hormone positive metastatic breast cancer (HR+ MBC). There are limited real-world studies with palbociclib and ribociclib. Here we report our experience with CDK4/6 inhibitors in these groups of patients. Material and methods: Patients with HR+ MBC who have received either palbociclib or ribociclib during the course of their treatment from January 2017 to January 2022 were included in the study. The baseline demographic features, treatment details and toxicity were recorded. Patients who received at least 1 month of therapy were included in the survival analysis. Results: A total of 144 patients received CDK4/6 inhibitors during the time period. The median age of the population was 53 (30-80) years. Ninety-eight (71.4%) patients presented with de novo metastatic disease. The most common site of metastasis was to the skeleton (74.2%). Most patients (75%) received palbociclib as their therapy. At a median follow-up of 20.2 months, the median progression free survival (PFS) of the whole population was 16.5 (95% confidence interval (95% CI): 11.6-25.5) months and the median overall survival (OS) was 29.7 (95% CI: 21.7-44.6) months. The presence of liver metastases, low progesterone receptor positivity (Allred score < 6) and prior systemic treatment were poor prognostic factors for both PFS and OS in multivariate analysis. Drug was discontinued for only 2.1% of the patient population. Conclusions: Use of CDK4/6 inhibitors has led to improvement in PFS and OS in patients with HR+ MBC and it is well tolerated. The presence of liver metastases and low progesterone receptor positivity (Allred score < 6) and prior treatment are poor prognostic factors.

The use of preoperative neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio and lymphocyte-monocyte ratio in predicting survival and groin node involvement of patients with squamous cell carcinoma of penis.

INTRODUCTION: The association between inflammation and malignancies is being recognized. In this study, we assessed the use of preoperative neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and lymphocyte-monocyte ratio (LMR) in predicting cancer-specific survival (CSS) and inguinal node involvement in patients with carcinoma penis. METHODS: Sixty-nine patients operated for squamous cell carcinoma penis with inguinal node dissection between 2012 and 2020 were identified. We recorded the type of surgery (partial/total penectomy), T stage, grade, lymphovascular invasion (LVI), perineural invasion (PNI), pathological status of inguinal nodes and nodal stage (pN1-3), extranodal extension (ENE), and CSS. The hemogram performed within 2 weeks of surgery was used for calculating NLR and LMR. RESULTS: Partial penectomy was the most common surgery (65.22%) and pT2 was the most common stage (53.62%). Grade 2 was seen in 66.67%, LVI in 34.78%, PNI in 37.68%, 52.17% had inguinal node involvement with pN3 being the most common (36.23%), and 36.23% had ENE. Kaplan-Meier analysis revealed that NLR of >3 and the LMR ≤3 indicated an inferior CSS (P = 0.05 and 0.04, respectively). T stage, inguinal node involvement, LVI, pN stage, and ENE were also associated with inferior CSS (P < 0.05). On multivariate analysis, T stage was significantly associated with CSS (P = 0.02). The NLR >3 and LMR ≤3 were also significantly associated with the presence of pathological inguinal node involvement (P = 0.001 and 0.026). CONCLUSION: NLR and LMR may help in predicting CSS and inguinal node involvement in patients of carcinoma penis.

PDL1 expression and its correlation with outcomes in non-metastatic triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).

PURPOSE: Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) has a poor outcome compared to other subtypes, even in those with early disease. Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have been approved in metastatic diseases and are being tested as a neoadjuvant strategy also. The response to ICIs is largely determined by the programmed death ligand 1 (PDL1) score, which also acts as a prognostic marker for outcomes. Here, we report the proportion of PDL1 expression in non-metastatic TNBC and its correlation with response to chemotherapy and outcomes. METHODS: We included all patients who had non-metastatic TNBC treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy, followed by surgery with/without adjuvant radiotherapy between September 2011 and November 2017. PDL1 testing was carried out on pre-treatment tumour cells with immunohistochemistry (Ventana SP142) and was correlated with pathological response, relapse-free survival (RFS) and overall survival (OS). PDL1 staining was interpreted as negative or positive (more than 1% staining). RESULTS: A total of 107 patients were included for analysis with a median age of 47 years (28-65 yrs). The PDL1 expression of more than 1% was seen in 31 (28.97%) patients. After a median follow-up of 55 months (range: 4-93 months), median RFS and OS were not reached. PDL1 expression did not affect the achievement of pathological complete response (pCR). However, PDL1 expression improved OS (p = 0.016) and trend towards RFS (p = 0.05). Patients who achieved pCR had better RFS and OC compared to those who did not. CONCLUSION: Our study shows PDL1 expression in 29% of the cases. PDL1 expression leads to better RFS and OS. Also, pCR improves survival.

Near-set Based Mucin Segmentation in Histopathology Images for Detecting Mucinous Carcinoma.

This paper introducesnear-set based segmentation method for extraction and quantification of mucin regions for detecting mucinouscarcinoma (MC which is a sub type of Invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC)). From histology point of view, the presence of mucin is one of the indicators for detection of this carcinoma. In order to detect MC, the proposed method majorly includes pre-processing by colour correction, colour transformation followed by near-set based segmentation and post-processing for delineating only mucin regions from the histological images at 40×. The segmentation step works in two phases such as Learn and Run.In pre-processing step, white balance method is used for colour correction of microscopic images (RGB format). These images are transformed into HSI (Hue, Saturation, and Intensity) colour space and H-plane is extracted in order to get better visual separation of the different histological regions (background, mucin and tissue regions). Thereafter, histogram in H-plane is optimally partitioned to find set representation for each of the regions. In Learn phase, features of typical mucin pixel and unlabeled pixels are learnt in terms of coverage of observed sets in the sample space surrounding the pixel under consideration. On the other hand, in Run phase the unlabeled pixels are clustered as mucin and non-mucin based on its indiscernibilty with ideal mucin, i.e. their feature values differ within a tolerance limit. This experiment is performed for grade-I and grade-II of MC and hence percentage of average segmentation accuracy is achieved within confidence interval of [97.36 97.70] for extracting mucin areas. In addition, computation of percentage of mucin present in a histological image is provided for understanding the alteration of such diagnostic indicator in MC detection.

Automated characterization and counting of Ki-67 protein for breast cancer prognosis: A quantitative immunohistochemistry approach.

Ki-67 protein expression plays an important role in predicting the proliferative status of tumour cells and deciding the future course of therapy in breast cancer. Immunohistochemical (IHC) determination of Ki-67 score or labelling index, by estimating the fraction of Ki67 positively stained tumour cells, is the most widely practiced method to assess tumour proliferation (Dowsett et al. 2011). Accurate manual counting of these cells (specifically nuclei) due to complex and dense distribution of cells, therefore, becomes critical and presents a major challenge to pathologists. In this paper, we suggest a hybrid clustering algorithm to quantify the proliferative index of breast cancer cells based on automated counting of Ki-67 nuclei. The proposed methodology initially pre-processes the IHC images of Ki-67 stained slides of breast cancer. The RGB images are converted to grey, L*a*b*, HSI, YCbCr, YIQ and XYZ colour space. All the stained cells are then characterized by two stage segmentation process. Fuzzy C-means quantifies all the stained cells as one cluster. The blue channel of the first stage output is given as input to k-means algorithm, which provides separate cluster for Ki-67 positive and negative cells. The count of positive and negative nuclei is used to calculate the F-measure for each colour space. A comparative study of our work with the expert opinion is studied to evaluate the error rate. The positive and negative nuclei detection results for all colour spaces are compared with the ground truth for validation and F-measure is calculated. The F-measure for L*a*b* colour space (0.8847) provides the best statistical result as compared to grey, HSI, YCbCr, YIQ and XYZ colour space. Further, a study is carried out to count nuclei manually and automatically from the proposed algorithm with an average error rate of 6.84% which is significant. The study provides an automated count of positive and negative nuclei using L*a*b*colour space and hybrid segmentation technique. Computerized evaluation of proliferation index can aid pathologist in assessing breast cancer severity. The proposed methodology, further, has the potential advantage of saving time and assisting in decision making over the present manual procedure and could evolve as an assistive pathological decision support system.

Quantitative microscopic evaluation of mucin areas and its percentage in mucinous carcinoma of the breast using tissue histological images.

Mucinous carcinoma (MC) of the breast is very rare (∼1-7% of all breast cancers), invasive ductal carcinoma. Presence of pools of extracellular mucin is one of the most important histological features for MC. This paper aims at developing a quantitative computer-aided methodology for automated identification of mucin areas and its percentage using tissue histological images. The proposed method includes pre-processing (i.e., colour space transformation and colour normalization), mucin regions segmentation, post-processing, and performance evaluation. The proposed algorithm achieved 97.74% segmentation accuracy in comparison to ground truths. In addition, the percentage of mucin present in the tissue regions is calculated by the mucin index (MI) for grading MC (pure, moderately, minimally mucinous).

Ultrasound-Guided Serratus Anterior Plane Block in Breast Reconstruction Surgery.

Pecs block and its variations have been used for various breast surgeries. We describe 2 cases of mastectomy and breast reconstruction by latissimus dorsi (LD) flap where regional analgesia was provided by a combination of ultrasound-guided Pecs-I block and serratus anterior plane block, a recently described technique in which local anesthetic is deposited in the plane between the LD and serratus anterior muscle. This resulted in excellent intraoperative and postoperative analgesia and a minimum of systemic analgesics. The described technique is safe to administer and provides good analgesia for breast reconstruction surgery by LD flap.