Prognostic impact of tumour burden measured by quantitative real-time PCR from sentinel lymph nodes of melanoma patients: data from 10-year follow-up

摘要

Sentinel node (SN) biopsy is regarded as standard of care for patients (pts) with cutaneous melanoma ae1.0 mm of thickness. In the recent AJCC classification, findings in the SN are simply classified as positive or negative. In our analyses, we were interested whether quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) is able to predict disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) depending on tumour burden in the SN.