For patients with melanoma, outcome does not vary with the time interval between primary biopsy and sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB), according to a review published in the July issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.

Pablo Vargas-Mora, M.D., from the Universidad de Chile in Santiago, and colleagues conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to examine the correlation between time from biopsy to SLNB and patient outcomes for melanoma. Data were included from six retrospective studies, with 9,705 patients; of these, 4,383 and 4,574 underwent an SLNB procedure at a time interval defined as early and late, respectively. The cutoff values used to define early SLNB and late SLNB varied by study, from 28 to 43 days.

The researchers found that the combined hazard ratio of the SLNB interval on melanoma-specific survival was 1.25 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.92 to 1.68), with high heterogeneity (I² = 83 percent; P = 0.002). For disease-free survival, the combined hazard ratio was 1.05 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.95 to 1.15), with low heterogeneity (I² = 9 percent; P = 0.36). For overall survival, the combined hazard ratio was 1.25 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.92 to 1.70), with low heterogeneity (I² = 37 percent; P = 0.20).

"The results of our work confirm that reported in many studies included in the meta-analysis, which showed no effect of the time interval on patient outcome," the authors write.

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