Letter

Completion lymphadenectomy may not increase in-transit disease in malignant melanoma

BMJ 2004; 329 doi: 10.1136/bmj.329.7477.1288-c (Published 25 November 2004)
Cite this as: BMJ 2004;329:1288.4

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  1. Robin Russell-Jones, director, skin tumour unit (russelljones@btinternet.com),
  2. Ciaran Healy, consultant plastic surgeon, department of plastic surgery,
  3. Ann-Marie Powell, specialist registrar, skin tumour unit,
  4. Katharine Acland, consultant dermatologist, skin tumour unit,
  5. Michael O'Doherty, consultant nuclear physician, department of nuclear medicine,
  6. Eduardo Calonje, director, diagnostic dermatopathology
  1. St John's Institute of Dermatology, St Thomas Hospital, London SE1 7EH

    EDITOR—The arguments put forward by Thomas and Clark against the use of sentinel node biopsy in malignant melanoma have not changed over the past four years.1 2 However, data are now available to test the hypothesis that completion lymphadenectomy might increase the rate of in-transit disease.

    We identified 10 studies, including our own, which report patterns of relapse separately according to sentinel node status.3 Overall we found 701 relapses among …

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