Results:
147 patients were included in our study, and they were divided into two groups, before pandemic (BP) and pandemic period (PP).
In lymphoscintigraphy performed in the BP period, early phase increased uptake was not observed in 23 patients, and increased uptake was obtained from 22 of these patients with delayed imaging. Surgery was performed in only 1 patient without increased uptake. In PP, increased uptake was not observed in 12 patients. In BP, no sentinel lymph nodes were found in 2 patients (2.7%) during the operation, while in PP, no SLNs were found in 7 patients (9.5%) but there was no statistically significant difference between the two groups in terms of SLN detection rate (p = 0.097).
Comparisons of patient characteristics before and during the pandemic are shown in Table 1-2.
As a result of statistical analysis when delayed images were taken by lymphoscintigraphy, increased uptake was observed and information about drainage pathways and SLN numbers were obtained in 12/74 (16.2%) patients. Although sentinel lymph node detection rate was 97.4% in BP and 90.4% in PP, the difference was not statistically significant. It was found that the sensitivity, NPV and accuracy of the SLNB procedure performed after taking delayed images was higher. It was also observed that more SLNs were removed in the SLNB procedure after taking delayed images but the difference did not reach a statistically significant level.