Background and Objective: Breast implant surgery for cosmetic purposes is the most popular plastic surgery and it has been performed for over 100 years. Rupture of silicone gel-filled breast implants usually is asymptomatic and is one of the more dangerous complications due to free silicone migration. The aim of our study was to evaluate the diagnostic value of ultrasound (US) in the evaluation of the integrity of silicone breast implants and identify the main sign of intact and ruptured breast implants. Patients and Methods: In this retrospective study, the medical documentation of women who underwent breast implant surgery and US checkups at Tautrimas Aštrauskas Clinic in Kaunas, Lithuania, during 2015–2020 was analyzed. The patients were divided into two groups: patients with intact and ruptured breast implants. The accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) as well as the signs of implant integrity of US examination were evaluated. Results: In this study, 76 women with bilateral breast implants (n = 152) were reviewed. On a US examination, ruptured implants were found in 41.1% (n = 61) of the cases; of them, 78.7% (n = 48) of the cases had ≥2 US signs of a ruptured implant, and in all these cases, implant rupture was confirmed at surgery. Overall, one US sign of a ruptured implant was found in 21.3% (n = 13) of the cases. Of them, inhomogeneous content in all cases (n = 3) was found in the intact implant group, and an abnormal implant shell was documented more often in the ruptured implant group, not intact one (n = 9, 90% vs. n = 1, 10%). US had a diagnostic accuracy of 94.7%, sensitivity of 98.3%, specificity of 89.2%, PPV of 93.4%, and NPV of 97.1% in the evaluation of implant integrity. Conclusions: Our results show that US is a very reliable alternative in evaluating breast implant integrity and could be the investigation of choice for implant rupture, while MRI could be advocated only in inconclusive cases. Uneven implant shell was found to be the most important US sign of breast implant rupture. Based on the findings, we recommend performing US examination after breast augmentation surgery with silicone gel-filled implants annually.

Leiomyosarcoma is a rare tumor of mesenchymal origin usually affecting the inferior vena cava. Early diagnosis is essential before surgical resection, which is the only therapeutic modality that prolongs patients’ survival. Ultrasonography, computer tomography, and magnetic resonance imaging are the main imaging modalities in this case. Combined with guided biopsies, they form the mainstay of reliable diagnosis. We report a case with retroperitoneal tumor arising from the middle segment of the inferior vena cava. Radiological examination revealed retroperitoneal tumor and helped to choose surgical treatment. Histopathological examination confirmed the diagnosis of leiomyosarcoma of the inferior vena cava.

Background and objectives: With improved diagnostic means of early breast cancer, the percentage of cases with metastasis in axillary lymph nodes has decreased from 50–75% to 15–30%. Lymphadenectomy and sentinel lymph node biopsy are not treatment procedures, as they aim at axillary nodal staging in breast cancer. Being surgical interventions, they can lead to various complications. Therefore, recently much attention has been paid to the identification of non-invasive methods for axillary nodal staging. In many countries, ultrasound is a first-line method to evaluate axillary lymph node status. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prognostic value of ultrasound in detecting intact axillary lymph nodes and to assess the accuracy of ultrasound in detecting a heavy nodal disease burden. The additional objective was to evaluate patients’ and tumor characteristics leading to false-negative results. Materials and Methods: A total of 227 women with newly diagnosed pT1 breast cancer were included to this prospective study conducted at the Breast Surgery Unit, Clinic of Surgery, Hospital of Lithuanian University of Health Sciences Kauno Klinikos, between May 1, 2016, and May 31, 2018. All patients underwent preoperative axillary ultrasound examination. Ultrasound data were compared with the results of histological examination. The accuracy and true-negative rate of ultrasound were calculated. The reasons of false-negative results were analyzed. Results: Of the 189 patients who had normally appearing axillary lymph nodes on preoperative ultrasound (PAUS-negative), 173 (91.5%) patients were also confirmed to have intact axillary lymph nodes (node-negative) by histological examination after surgery. The accuracy and the negative predictive value of ultrasound examination were 84.1% and 91.5%, respectively. In ≥3 node-positive cases, the accuracy and the negative predictive value increased to 88.7% and 98.3%, respectively. In total, false-negative results were found in 8.5% of the cases (n = 16); in the PAUS-negative group, false-negative results were recorded only in 1.6% of the cases (n = 3). The results of PAUS and pathological examination differed significantly between patients without and with lymphovascular invasion (LV0 vs. LV1, p < 0.001) as well as those showing no human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) expression and patients with weakly or strongly expressed HER2 (HER2(0) vs. HER2(1), p = 0.024). Paired comparisons revealed that the true-negative rate was significantly different between the LV0 and LV1 groups (91% vs. 66.7%, p < 0.05), and the false-negative rate was statistically significant different between the HER2(0) and HER2(1) groups (10.5% vs. 1.2%, p < 0.05). Evaluation of other characteristics showed both the groups to be homogenous. Conclusions: Negative axillary ultrasound excluded axillary metastatic disease in 91.5% of the patients. PAUS had an accuracy of 88.7% in detecting a heavy nodal disease burden. With the absence of lymphovascular invasion (LV0), we can rely on PAUS examination that axillary lymph nodes are intact (PAUS-negative), and this patients’ group could avoid sentinel lymph node biopsy. Patients without HER2 expression are at a greater likelihood of false-negative results; therefore, the findings of ultrasound that axillary lymph nodes are intact (PAUS-negative results) should be interpreted with caution.

About 70% of early breast cancer cases axillary lymph nodes are intact and surgical axillary intervention is unnecessary. There is an ongoing search for non-invasive methods to evaluate the status of axillary lymph nodes in order to prevent Axillary Lymph Node Dissection (ALND) or Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy (SLNB). Patients with normal axillary physical exam and ultrasound rarely harbor a large nodal disease burden (pN2). There are studies suggesting that the Preoperative Axillary Ultrasound (PAUS) can replace SLNB when the axillary surgery is no longer curative and only biomarkers are important for adjuvant chemotherapy. The purpose of this study was to determine the accuracy and reliability of the ultrasound examination in detecting more than three metastatic axillary lymph nodes (pN2) and to assess the clinicopathological factors that lead to the truenegative and false-negative results of the ultrasound study. All patients underwent the PAUS as part of their staging. The nodal status assessed by PAUS was compared with histological findings. Determining pN2, the accuracy of PAUS was 91.2% and the NPV -96.5%. False-negative results of PAUS were 18.7 %. On bivariate analysis, primary Tumor Size (T), the tumor spreading in blood and Lymphatic Vessels (LV), Tumor Grade (G) and patient age were found to be significantly different between true-and false-negative PAUS. We found that PAUS is sufficiently accurate to detect a heavy nodal disease burden and in most cases an additional axillary surgery can be avoided. PAUS findings may be less accurate in young age and in patients with T2, G3 and LV1.