Melanoma Patients’ Sentinel Lymph Nodes (SLNS) Play A Strong Role In Disease Prognosis, UCSF Study Reports
Source: Eurek Alert!, May 1999
ATLANTA — Researchers at the University of California San Francisco report that melanoma patients whose cancer has spread to their sentinel lymph nodes (SLNs) have a greater chance of experiencing disease recurrence and mortality compared to those whose cancer has not advanced to their SLNs.
The sentinel lymph node (SLN) earned its name because it is the first region in a person’s body that receives cancer cells from the place where the disease originated. After cancer cells drain to the SLN, the disease may spread, or metastasize, to other regions of the body. Lymph nodes are the body’s first line of defense against infections and cancers. They produce infection-fighting lymphocytes that are distributed via the lymphatic system that functions as a channel of freeways throughout the body.
“Sentinel lymph nodes are a strong marker for predicting a patient’s outcomes in regards to disease recurrence and death due to advanced melanoma," says Stanley P.L. Leong, MD, FACS, UCSF professor of surgery and director of the Sentinel Lymph Node program in the UCSF Cancer Center. “We found that patients who have a positive SLN biopsy are more likely to experience a disease recurrence and die from melanoma than those with a negative SLN biopsy."