The Surgery Department, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Medical College (NSCBMC), is soon going to conduct one of the biggest clinical trials on breast cancer ‘Fluroscein Sodium guided versus other tracer guided sentinel lymph node biopsy in patients with early breast cancer’. If the surgeons receive results matching their expectation, it will pave way to officially acknowledge the use of very low-cost dyes in sentinel lymph node biopsy for early breast cancer. As still 50% to 60% of the patients in our country deprived of the advanced tracer technique due to its high cost. It is one of the biggest clinical trials on breast cancer “Fluorescein Sodium guided versus other tracer guided sentinel lymph node biopsy in patients with early breast cancer (FLUOSENT). It is a ‘Randomized controlled trial’ to be conducted by the Surgery Department, NSCB Medical College, Jabalpur. Fifteen institutes from India including AIIMS Delhi AIIMS Patna, AIIMS Bilaspur and Nepal and Bangladesh will be participating in this clinical trial led by the Department of Surgery, NSCB Medical College, Jabalpur.

 

Dean, NSCBMCH, Professor, Dr Navneet Saxena who also heads the executive committee of the research unit of medical college, at the time of joining, opined that the research will be one of his top priorities and now medical college is leading the one of biggest clinical trials in breast cancer. Dr Sanjay Kumar Yadav, Breast, Thyroid and Endocrine Surgeon and Principal Investigator for this trial, said that “We will be evaluating sentinel lymph node biopsy for early breast cancer using very low-cost dyes. It has decreased the cost of the breast cancer SLNB surgery significantly”. Dr. Yadav added that the usual cost of this technique can range anywhere between Rs. 5000 and Rs. 30000 but here it costs less than Rs 100. It may be mentioned that Dr Sanjay is pioneer of this technique in Central India. Professor Pawan Agarwal, Head of Surgery Department said that our focus is always doing research which is affordable and most helpful for the poorest of the poor patients.