IN VIVO EVALUATION OF THREE DIFFERENT TECHNETIUM-LABELED RADIOPHARMACEUTICALS FOR SENTINEL LYMPH NODE IDENTIFICATION

MARTIN M. EDREIRA, LUCAS L. COLOMBO, JUAN H. PEREZ, ELISA O. SAJAROFF AND SILVIA G. DE CASTIGLIA

NUCLEAR MEDICINE COMMUNICATIONS

Año: 2001 vol. 22 p. 499 - 504

0143-3636

This work was designed to compare sentinel lymph node (SLN) uptake of 99mTc-labelled human serumalbumin colloid (99mTc-HSAC), 99mTc-labelled antimony sulphur colloid (99mTc-SC) and a 99mTc-labelleddextran 70 solution (99mTc-Dx) and their selectivity in the identification of this node in the right rearfootpad (RRF) of normal mice and tumour bearing mice. Radiopharmaceutical uptake in the SLN (popliteallymph node) and the lumbar lymph node (LLN), the second lymphatic node station from RRF, weremeasured at different time points post-intradermal or intratumoural injection into the RRF of NIH normalmice and of Balb/c mice harbouring the murine mammary tumour M2. 99mTc-HSAC uptake in the SLNwas significantly higher than LLN uptake. The 99mTc-SC demonstrated high uptake in SLN, butaccumulation in LLN was also high. 99mTc-Dx showed low uptakes in both SLN and LLN. The intradermalinjection resulted in a more effective radiopharmaceutical accumulation in SLN than did the intratumouralinoculation. Data also show that increments in tumour volume reduced radiopharmaceutical uptake in theSLN. Our results show that 99mTc-HSAC exhibits the highest uptake in the SLN combined with thesmallest amounts of radiopharmaceutical passing through to the LLN. Therefore, 99mTc-HSAC appears tobe the best radiopharmaceutical for sentinel node detection.