[Sentinel lymph nodes in squamous cell cancer of the head and neck]

Twenty five patients with squamous cell oral cancer and without clinical evidence of regional cervical metastases have undergone 99mTc lymphoscintigraphy of cervical lymph nodes to localize the sentinel node 24 hours before surgery. Intraoperative localization of the sentinel node with gamma-probe (the probe was removed afterwords) was followed by operation on the primary focus and radical neck fat dissection. The removed tissues were examined histologically. The sentinel nodes were detected in 22 (88%) patients. A total number of the sentinel lymph nodes was 44. Six patients had metastases in the sentinel nodes, in 3 of them metastases were detected in the removed fat. The results of the study show that the technique is informative in localization of the sentinel lymph node.