The value of sentinel lymph-node biopsy in women with node-positive breast cancer at diagnosis and node-negative tumour after neoadjuvant therapy: a systematic review.

PURPOSE: To conduct a systematic review to analyse the performance of the sentinel lymph-node biopsy (SLNB) in women with node-positive breast cancer at diagnosis and node-negative tumour after neoadjuvant therapy, compared to axillary lymph-node dissection. METHODS: The more relevant databases were searched. Main outcomes were false-negative rate (FNR), sentinel lymph-node identification rate (SLNIR), negative predictive value (NPV), and accuracy. We conducted meta-analyses when appropriate. RESULTS: Twenty studies were included. The pooled FNR was 0.14 (95% CI 0.11-0.17), the pooled SLNIR was 0.89 (95% CI 0.86-0.92), NPV was 0.83 (95% CI 0.79-0.87), and summary accuracy was 0.92 (95% CI 0.90-0.94). SLNB performed better when more than one node was removed and double mapping was used. CONCLUSIONS: SLNB can be performed in women with a node-negative tumour after neoadjuvant therapy. It has a better performance when used with previous marking of the affected node and with double tracer.

Photoelectrocatalytic oxidation of remazol turquoise blue and toxicological assessment of its oxidation products.

The ability of photoelectrocatalytic oxidation to degrade the commercially important copper-phtalocyanine dye, remazol turquoise blue 15 (RTB) was investigated. The best experimental condition was optimized, evaluating the performance of Ti/TiO2 thin-film electrodes prepared by sol-gel method in the decolourization of 32 mg L(-1) RTB dye in 0.5 mol L(-1) Na2SO4 pH 8 and applied potential of +1.5 V versus SCE under UV irradiation. Spectrophotometric measurements, high performance liquid chromatography, dissolved organic carbon (TOC) evaluation and stripping analysis of yielding solution obtained after 3 h of photoelectrolysis leads to 100% of absorbance removal from wavelength of 250-800 nm, 79.6% of TOC reduction and the releasing of up to 54.6% dye-bound copper (0.85 mg L(-1)) into the solution. Both, original and oxidized dye solution did not presented mutagenic activity with the strains TA98 and TA100 of Salmonella in the presence and absence of S9 mix at the tested doses. Nevertheless, the yielding photoelectrocatalytic oxidized solution showed an increase in the acute toxicity for Vibrio fischeri bacteria, explained by copper liberation during treatment.