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Published on: February 12, 2022
Inguinal or inguino-iliac/obturator lymph node dissection after positive inguinal sentinel lymph node in patients
Nebojsa Glumac1, Marko Hocevar, Vesna Zadnik
1Department of Surgical Oncology, Institute of Oncology, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Background:
The aim of the study was to determine whether the presence of inguinal sentinel lymph node (SLN) metastases smaller than 2 mm (micrometastases) subdivided according to the number of micrometastases predicts additional, non-sentinel inguinal, iliac or obturator lymph node involvement in completion lymph node dissection (CLND). PATIENTS AND METHODS.: Positive inguinal SLN was detected in 58 patients (32 female, 26 male, median age 55 years) from 743 consecutive and prospectively enrolled patients with primary cutaneous melanoma stage I and II who were treated with SLN biopsy between 2001 and 2007.
Results:
Micrometastases in inguinal SLN were detected in 32 patients, 14 were single, 2 were double, and 16 were multiple. Twenty-six patients had macrometastases.
Conclusions:
No patient with any micrometastases or a single SLN macrometastasis in the inguinal region had any iliac/obturator non-sentinel metastases after CLND in our series. Furthermore, no patient with single SLN micrometastasis in the inguinal region had any non-sentinel metastases at all after CLND in our series. In these cases respective CLND might be omitted.
