The results of complete lymph node dissections in 88 melanoma patients with positive sentinel nodes

Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy in Cutaneous Melanoma: The WHO Melanoma Program Experience

“…In our experience, this accounts for 22% of occurrences and is in line with the data from other reported values that range from 5 to 35%. [15][16][17] This is a very important finding because it indicates the risk of positive nodes other than SLN in the same regional basin, and at the same time indicates that a very large group of patients (78%) have been submitted to a nonuseful selective dissection who are cancer-free after the removal of SLN.…”

Predictive role of preoperative lymphoscintigraphy on the status of the sentinel lymph node in clinically node-negative patients with cutaneous melanoma

“…As to the upper limit of 4 mm, Ferrone et al [19] reported that sN status was the strongest independent predictor of outcome in 126 patients with thick melanoma, whereas Essner et al [20] observed no significant difference in 5-year overall survival in 121 patients with either tumor-negative or tumor-positive sN (60 ± 7 vs. 50 ± 10%), although the 5-year disease-free survival was significantly lower (P = 0.012) in patients with tumor-positive (34 ± 9%) than in those with tumor-negative (47 ± 7%) sN dissection. Noteworthy, a potential bias of these evaluations is represented by the therapeutic benefit of radical lymph node dissection in patients with sN metastasis [21,22].…”