ArticleAnnals of surgical oncology2025
Evaluating Variation in Lymph Node Sampling During Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy for Melanoma.
Article in Annals of surgical oncology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
16 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundThe operative standard for melanoma, implemented by the Commission on Cancer (CoC), addresses margin width and excision depth, but does not collect information on sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB). However, SLNB, an implemented technical standard in breast cancer, is also critical in the management of melanoma through its impact on nodal staging. This study aimed to characterize the current facility-level variation in nodal yield and nodal positivity to determine if there is an opportunity for improvement through standardization. PATIENTS AND
methodsUsing the National Cancer Database, we identified patients with T1b-T4 melanoma of the trunk and upper extremities who underwent SLNB from 2018 to 2022. Reliability-adjusted estimates for nodal yield and nodal positivity were calculated using Poisson regression and logistic regression with random intercepts for hospitals.
resultsWe identified 48,653 melanoma patients from 1167 facilities. SLNB median nodal yield was 2.4 (IQR 2.2-2.7), ranging from 1.4 to 7.0. SLNB median nodal positivity was 18.0% (IQR 17.1-19.5%), ranging from 11.6 to 40.5%. A weak correlation between nodal yield and nodal positivity was observed (Spearman correlation coefficient = 0.08, p = 0.009).
conclusionsFacility-level variation in nodal yield was minimal and weakly correlated with nodal positivity. This suggests that SLNB performed for melanoma of the trunk and upper extremities is well standardized across CoC hospitals in the absence of a defined operative standard. Future efforts to improve the quality of melanoma nodal surgery may be best focused on technical elements of other procedures, such as lymphadenectomy or more novel lymph node dissection approaches following neoadjuvant therapy.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.