Little attention has been paid to the characteristics and outcomes of patients who experience distant, local or regional recurrence of melanoma following a negative sentinel lymph node biopsy. This article aims to review the published literature on the topic and presents some general summaries regarding this patient population. Patients who experience a disease recurrence following a negative sentinel lymph node biopsy have a worse overall survival compared with patients with a positive sentinel lymph node biopsy. The implications and possible explanations for these findings are discussed in order to both underscore the need for in-depth investigation of local, regional or distant melanoma recurrence among patients following a true negative sentinel lymph node biopsy, as well as increased efforts to minimize the rate of false negative sentinel lymph node biopsies.
Keywords: false-negative rate; melanoma; outcomes; recurrence; sentinel lymph node; survival.