New Tool Could Aid Decisions on Elective Neck Dissection: Fast polymerase chain reaction detects sentinel lymph node positivity

Faster Analysis

The GeneXpert System does in about 35 minutes what used to take three hours.

“Basically, the frozen section is performed. This is put into a lysis buffer, and that’s placed into a pre-formed cartridge that this company makes,” he said. “And it’s all done within this little cartridge.”

Combining the best two marker genes gives 97 percent specificity. Now, out of 100 patients, only one candidate for elective neck dissection would be missed, Dr. Ferris said.

“We can eliminate almost all of these patients with a much [more] accurate technique intraoperatively,” he said.

Dr. Ferris said the technology is useful for pathologists. “We’re not trying to replace pathologists but [to use this technology] as a molecular adjunct to pathological review,” he said. “And we think prospective clinical trials should be used to evaluate the clinical utility of intraoperative staging for the detection of recurrent disease.”