Sentinel lymph node biopsy for melanoma of the head and neck

Since its first description nearly two centuries ago, melanoma has been a difficult disease to diagnose and treat. With the incidence and mortality rates slowly increasing, understanding this disease is more important than ever. Herein, the current diagnostic and treatment recommendations for melanoma of the head and neck are reviewed, with special emphasis on the use of sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB). For the past decade, SLNB has been a well-accepted procedure in the treatment of truncal and extremity melanoma, providing useful information for both treatment and prognosis. Still, despite its clear role in the rest of the body, the role of SLNB has not yet been fully defined in the management of melanoma of the head and neck. The complexity of lymphatic drainage patterns and the frequent need to remove sentinel lymph nodes from the parotid gland, thus placing the facial nerve at risk, have made head and neck surgical oncologists slow to adopt this method. However, current data from several trials indicate that in the head and neck, sentinel lymph nodes can be identified reliably approximately 98% of the time using intraoperative lymphatic mapping. In addition, the false-negative and complication rates are appropriately low. SLNB allows for accurate staging of patients, informed discussions of prognosis and the use of adjuvant therapies, including radiation and interferon-alpha2b. For these reasons, the authors believe that SLNB will become the standard-of-care for head and neck melanoma as well as for other body sites.