Accuracy and Utility of Preoperative Ultrasound-Guided Axillary Lymph Node Biopsy for Invasive Breast Cancer: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Background. With the acceleration of the pace of life and work, the incidence rate of invasive breast cancer is getting higher and higher, and early diagnosis is very important. This study screened and analyzed the published literature on ultrasound-guided biopsy of invasive breast cancer and obtained the accuracy and practicality of preoperative biopsy. Method. The four databases were screened for the literature. There was no requirement for the start date of retrieval, and the deadline was July 2, 2022. Two researchers screened the literature, respectively, and included the literature on preoperative ultrasound-guided biopsy and intraoperative and postoperative pathological diagnosis of invasive breast cancer. The diagnostic data included in the literature were extracted and meta-analyzed with RevMan 5.4 software, and the bias risk map, forest map, and summary receiver operating characteristic curves (SROC) were drawn. Results. The included 19 studies involved about 18668 patients with invasive breast cancer. The degree of bias of the included literature is low. The distribution range of true positive, false positive, true negative, and false negative in the forest map is large, which may be related to the large difference in the number of patients in each study. Most studies in the SROC curve are at the upper left, indicating that the accuracy of ultrasound-guided axillary biopsy is very high. Conclusion. For invasive breast cancer, preoperative ultrasound-guided biopsy can accurately predict staging and grading of breast cancer, which has important reference value for surgery and follow-up treatment.