• 12/11/2004
  • Staff editors
  • Obesity, Fitness & Wellness Week, Dec. 18

According to recent research published in the International Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, “sentinel node navigation surgery (SNNS) has received considerable attention for its role in deciding whether to perform neck dissection in patients with early oral cancer. However, diagnostic accuracy and its intraoperative availability of results remain important concerns. First, we shortened the examination time required for genetic diagnosis.”

“Second, we assessed the quality of the extracted mRNA. Third, 10 patients with early NO oral cancer underwent SNNS using our new technique for genetic diagnosis to determine whether neck dissection was required,” said H. Hamakawa and colleagues, Ehime University, School of Medicine.

“The examination time of our one-step reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction method using a minicolumn and LightCycler was successfully shortened to 2 hours, permitting intraoperative genetic diagnosis. The extracted mRNA was of high quality. Six sentinel nodes in four patients were diagnosed to be metastatic on genetic diagnosis; these patients underwent neck dissection.”

“The other six patients avoided unnecessary surgery. We conclude that intraoperative genetic diagnosis of micrometastasis holds promise of being a sensitive method that can be used to support SNNS,” Hamakawa and coauthors stated.

Hamakawa and colleagues published their study in International Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (Intraoperative real-time genetic diagnosis for sentinel node navigation surgery. Int J Oral Maxillofac Surg, 2004;33(7):670-675).