Clinical trials have proven the magnetic fluid method to not be inferior to the radioisotope and dye method in breast cancer SLNB (Taruno K, et al ASCO 2018, J Clin Oncol 36, 2018 suppl:abstr e12603).
Since the radioisotope method cannot be performed in many medical facilities in Japan, blue dye, fluorescent dye, or both are often used. The preliminary data gathered from SLNB performed on 13 patients with clinically node-negative breast cancer showed that the identification rate of SLN was 100% when using fluorescent dye, and 92.3% (12 cases) with a superparamagnetic iron oxide (ferucarbotran) and magnetic probe. In one case, no SLN were detected using the magnetic fluid method. However, all metastatic SLN could be identified with both methods performed on their own.
Even though only a small number of cases were examined, the results indicate no difference in the SLN identification rate between the two methods.