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ESSO 45 | High-risk melanoma shows increased sentinel lymph node positivity

Hesham Mohamed • 4 Nov 2026
ESSO 45
Melanoma Skin Cancer

Hesham Mohamed, MBBch, The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK, presents data from study investigating sentinel lymph node status and oncological outcomes in high-risk and low-risk cutaneous primary melanoma. The high-risk group demonstrated significantly worse disease-free and recurrence-free survival, with 30% higher sentinel lymph node positivity compared to the low-risk group. Sentinel lymph node biopsy findings substantially altered staging in the high-risk cohort, with many patients upstaged to stage 3C rather than the stage 2B–C classification they would have received without nodal assessment. This interview took place at the 2026 European Society of Surgical Oncology (ESSO) Annual Meeting in Madrid, Spain.

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Transcript

So, we looked at about 300 patients from the Royal Marsden over the last four years and what the outcomes were for them after operation...
So, we looked at about 300 patients from the Royal Marsden over the last four years and what the outcomes were for them after operation. We basically saw about 211 patients on the low-risk group and 89 on the high-risk group. The low – risk group done considerably worse from a disease-free survival and recurrence-free survival. Overall, the high risk group had higher recurrence. The sentinel lymph node positivity was higher as well. So that was about a 30 % higher sentinel lymph node POSITIVE on the high-risk group compared to the low-risk group. And that was quite important as well because the staging quite changed significantly for the high risk group where a lot of them ended up being stage 3C compared to the normal stage 2B and C that they would get if they did not end up having the sentinel lymph node biopsy.

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The content of VJOncology is intended for healthcare professionals