DOCTORS here have urged patients not to panic after an American study found that removing cancerous lymph nodes from some breast-cancer sufferers did not improve survival rates.
The study has led some clinics in the United States to change the way they carry out treatment. But hospitals and cancer centres here are not following suit, saying that more extensive studies are needed.
There is no need for patients scheduled to have all their lymph nodes removed to panic, said Parkway Cancer Centre's medical director, Dr Ang Peng Tiam.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women here. There were 7,160 new cases and 1,649 deaths between 2004 and 2008, said the latest Singapore Cancer Registry report.
The US study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association this month, involved 891 women with early-stage tumours. They were given sentinel lymph node biopsies, which detect cancer in lymph nodes. They were then randomly chosen to have 10 or more nodes removed or no action taken.
Both groups had similar five-year survival rates - 92.5 per cent for those who had nodes removed, and 91.8 per cent for those who did not.
-- ST