Safety and Benefit Of Sentinel Lymph Nodes Biopsy Compared to Regional Lymph Node Dissection in Primary Vulvar Cancer Patients Without Distant Metastasis and Adjacent Organ Invasion: A Retrospective Population Study

• Published in: Frontiers in oncology 2021-07, Vol.11, p.676038-676038
• Main Authors: Zhou, Weili, Bai, Yang, Yue, Yangyang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: age; Oncology; regional lymph node dissection; sentinel lymph node biopsy; surgery; tumor size; vulvar cancer
• ISSN: 2234-943X; 2234-943X
• DOI: 10.3389/fonc.2021.676038

BACKGROUNDThe safety and benefit of sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) compared with regional lymph node dissection (RLND) and no lymph nodes removed (NA) in patients with vulvar squamous cell cancer (VSCC) was not well studied. METHODSA retrospective analysis on VSCC patients without distant metastasis and adjacent organ invasion from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program database between 2004 and 2016 was carried out. Within subgroups stratified by negative (LN-) or positive (LN+) regional lymph node findings, inverse probability weighting (IPW) adjusted multivariate Fine-Gray compete risk (CR) model and accelerated failure time (AFT) model was used to investigate the factors associated with and cancer-specific survival (CSS) and overall survival (OS). RESULTSOf the 3,161 VSCC patients treated with surgery, 287 (9.1%) underwent SLNB, 1,716 (54.3%) underwent RLND, and 1,158 (36.6%) had no regional lymph nodes removed. As illustrated by IPW adjusted multivariate regressions, SLNB was significantly associated with prolonged CSS (LN-, adjusted sub-proportional hazard ratio [sHR] = 0.42; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.19-0.93; P=0.032; LN+, adjusted sHR = 0.29; 95% CI, 0.16-0.54, P