Lanreotide Autogel [amount hidden] and lymphorrhea prevention after axillary node dissection in breast cancer: a phase III double blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Somatostatin and Lanreotide.

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are young adults, adults, middle-aged adults, older adults and people over 80, women only.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study.

Because people in this Somatostatin study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

Neither the participants nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Somatostatin, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Somatostatin group a baseline to be compared against.

A Phase III double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial was performed between April 1st, 2008, and December 31st, 2010.

The primary endpoint was the lymphorrhea volume (ml) in the axillary drain during the first four postoperative days.

The secondary end points were the number of days until axillary drain removal, hospital stay duration (days), lymphorrhea volume (ml) up to days 15, 30 and 180, number of cases with seroma aspiration and number of seroma aspirations, evaluation of wound, arm pain and mobility on days 15, 30 and 180.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Axilla, Breast Neoplasms, Exudates and Transudates, Gels, Lymph, Lymph Node Excision and Lymph Nodes.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Somatostatin and Lanreotide.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 7 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2012 (European journal of surgical oncology : the journal of the European Society of Surgical Oncology and the British Association of Surgical Oncology), a journal based in England.

More context: the Somatostatin compound page and the Lanreotide compound page, all human trials.