Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Oncol. Apr 10, 2016; 7(2): 174-188
Published online Apr 10, 2016. doi: 10.5306/wjco.v7.i2.174
Clinical utilities and biological characteristics of melanoma sentinel lymph nodes
Dale Han, Daniel C Thomas, Jonathan S Zager, Barbara Pockaj, Richard L White, Stanley PL Leong
Dale Han, Daniel C Thomas, Department of Surgery, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06520, United States
Jonathan S Zager, Department of Cutaneous Oncology, Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, FL 33612, United States
Barbara Pockaj, Mayo Clinic, Scottsdale, AZ 85259, United States
Richard L White, Division of Surgical Oncology, Carolinas Medical Center, Levine Cancer Institute, Charlotte, NC 28204, United States
Stanley PL Leong, Center for Melanoma Research and Treatment, California Pacific Medical Center, San Francisco, CA 94107, United States
Author contributions: Han D and Thomas DC contributed equally to this manuscript; Han D, Thomas DC and Leong SPL contributed to the literature review, drafting, critical revision, and editing of the manuscript; Han D and Leong SPL contributed to the conception and final approval of the manuscript; Zager JS, Pockaj B and White RL contributed to the critical revision and editing of the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflicts of interest regarding this manuscript.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Stanley PL Leong, MD, Center for Melanoma Research and Treatment, California Pacific Medical Center, 2340 Clay Street, 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94107, United States. leongsx@cpmcri.org
Telephone: +1-415- 6003800 Fax: +1-415-6003865
Received: October 2, 2015
Peer-review started: October 9, 2015
First decision: November 4, 2015
Revised: January 8, 2016
Accepted: February 14, 2016
Article in press: February 16, 2016
Published online: April 10, 2016
Processing time: 188 Days and 11.4 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: This review examines the development of sentinel lymph node biopsy for melanoma as the quintessential technique for determining a patient’s nodal status, the efficacy of sentinel lymph node biopsy in patients with melanoma, and the biology of melanoma metastatic to sentinel lymph nodes.