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.