Sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) is a staging test done at the time of wide excision of melanoma to identify early evidence of lymph node involvement to guide prognosis and subsequent patient management and follow up.
Unfortunately for a substantial proportion of patients with stage 3 melanoma (e.g. spread to local lymph glands), their disease recurs after surgery. Despite this, no guidelines are widely accepted for how stage 3 patients should be followed after surgery in order to detect recurrence. We thus conducted regular imaging on stage 3 melanoma patients using FDG-PET/CT scans, which are more sensitive in identifying recurrence than conventional CT scans.
When a melanoma appears for the first time it is usually localized, removed by surgery, and presents little risk for the patient. But danger arises when this tumour decides to travel and deposit somewhere else in the body – a process called metastasis.
