Intraoperative imprint cytology for the diagnosis of sentinel node metastases in breast cancer.

Accurate intraoperative diagnosis of sentinel node metastases enables the selection of patients for axillary lymph node dissection, thus avoiding an unnecessary additional operation in patients with false-negative results. The main reason for false-negative results of imprint cytology was poor quality of the imprint samples because of sampling error. False-positive imprint cytology results that lead to an unnecessary axillary lymph node dissection are very rare. Imprint cytology can be recommended for the intraoperative examination of sentinel nodes in breast cancer patients.