Study Design and Participants
breast cancer
BREAST CANCER
This was a single-centre, single surgeon, study of prospective patients with early breast cancer undergoing SLN biopsy using ICG-RI from April 2021 to October 2022. It was registered on the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ANZCTR: ACTRN12621001033831) and followed the Standards for Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy (STARD) and Consolidated Health Economic Evaluation Reporting Standards 2022 (CHEERS 2022) guidelines.Inclusion criteria was female, age ≥18 years, with early breast cancer confirmed by core or fine-needle biopsy, a clinically node-negative axilla, and scheduled for SLN biopsy with breast conserving surgery (BCS). Exclusion criteria was patients with clinically positive lymph nodes, previous axillary surgery or neoadjuvant therapy, or known contraindication to ICG. Patients who met inclusion criteria underwent SLN biopsy with dual-tracer ICG-RI technique. This cohort was compared with a retrospective cohort of consecutive patients, meeting the same inclusion criteria (except for ICG contraindications), who underwent SLN biopsy using standard BD-RI before the introduction of ICG.