The association between large congenital melanocytic naevi and cutaneous melanoma: preliminary findings from an Internet-based registry of 379 patients.

There is ample evidence in the literature to support the fact that there is an increased risk of the development of melanoma in individuals with a large congenital melanocytic naevus (LCMN). The published melanoma risk estimates, by and large, do not distinguish between cutaneous and extracutaneous melanomas. It is currently not known to what extent each contributes to the overall cited melanoma risk estimates.

Correlation between preoperative lymphoscintigraphy and metastatic nodal disease sites in 362 patients with cutaneous melanomas of the head and neck.

Objective: Lymphoscintigraphy for head and neck melanomas demonstrates a wide variation in lymphatic drainage pathways, and sentinel nodes (SNs) are reported in sites that are not clinically predicted (discordant). To assess the clinical relevance of these discordant node fields, the lymphoscintigrams of patients with head and neck melanomas were analyzed and correlated with the sites of metastatic nodal disease.

Methods: In 362 patients with head and neck melanomas who underwent lymphoscintigraphy, the locations of the SNs were compared with the locations of the primary tumors.

Failure to remove true sentinel nodes can cause failure of the sentinel node biopsy technique: evidence from antimony concentrations in false-negative sentinel nodes from melanoma patients.

We have recently found that antimony (originating from the technetium 99m antimony trisulfide colloid, used for preoperative lymphoscintigraphy) can be measured in tissue sections from archival paraffin blocks of sentinel nodes (SNs) by means of inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) to confirm that removed nodes are true SNs. We performed a retrospective analysis of antimony concentrations in all our false-negative (FN) SNs to determine whether errors in lymphadenectomy (i.e.

Pathologic review of negative sentinel lymph nodes in melanoma patients with regional recurrence: a clinicopathologic study of 1152 patients undergoing sentinel lymph node biopsy.

A sentinel lymph node (SLN) that is melanoma negative by pathologic examination implies absence of melanoma metastasis to that regional lymph node field. However, a small proportion of patients develop regional node field recurrence after a negative SLN biopsy. In this study, we reviewed the histopathology of negative SLNs from such patients to determine whether occult melanoma cells were present in the SLNs, to characterize the pathologic features of false-negative SLNs, and to provide recommendations for the histopathologic examination of these specimens.