High-resolution ultrasound combined with power Doppler sonography can reduce the number of sentinel lymph node biopsies in cutaneous melanoma.

BACKGROUND

Sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) is a widely accepted procedure to accurately stage patients with cutaneous melanoma. Disadvantages of the SLNB procedure are the overall costs and potential side effects of the operation [J Dtsch Dermatol Ges 2009;7:318-327; J Am Dermatol 2010;62:737-748].

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of our study was to evaluate whether high-resolution ultrasound combined with power Doppler sonography (PDS) is an appropriate tool for preoperative identification and characterization of sentinel lymph nodes (SLNs) in patients with cutaneous melanoma.

METHODS

In a prospective study eighty-one consecutive patients with cutaneous melanoma (33 females and 48 males) in whom dissection of SLNs was indicated underwent ultrasound examinations before and after the preoperative lymphoscintigraphy.

RESULTS

A total of 170 SLNs (mean 2.1 per patient) were removed and examined by histopathology. High resolution ultrasound combined with PDS correctly identified 2 of 9 positive SLNs. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive values of ultrasound were 22.2% (95% confidence interval (CI) = 2.8-60.0), 100% (95% CI = 97.7-100.0), 100.0% (95% CI = 15.8-100.0), and 95.8% (95% CI = 91.6-98.3), respectively.

CONCLUSIONS

Although high-resolution ultrasound combined with PDS cannot substitute SLNB, this technique offers earlier diagnosis of lymph node involvement in a small subgroup of patients (with subcapsular location of metastases), and introduces the possibility to exclude those patients from SLN procedure and directly prepare them for complete lymph node dissection (CLND).