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Ultrasound morphology of inguinal lymph nodes may not herald an associated pathology

BACKGROUND: Among patients undergoing follow-up after surgery for melanoma, ultrasound (US) very often reveals lymph nodes in groin area, that do not show clear characters of a metastatic lesion yet that have atypical US features, which could result in diagnostic uncertainty. We evaluated such lesio...

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Autores principales: Solivetti, Francesco M, Elia, Fulvia, Graceffa, Dario, Di Carlo, Aldo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3551661/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23078807
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1756-9966-31-88
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author Solivetti, Francesco M
Elia, Fulvia
Graceffa, Dario
Di Carlo, Aldo
author_facet Solivetti, Francesco M
Elia, Fulvia
Graceffa, Dario
Di Carlo, Aldo
author_sort Solivetti, Francesco M
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Among patients undergoing follow-up after surgery for melanoma, ultrasound (US) very often reveals lymph nodes in groin area, that do not show clear characters of a metastatic lesion yet that have atypical US features, which could result in diagnostic uncertainty. We evaluated such lesions among a cohort of patients. METHODS: The study population consisted of patients who presented consecutively to our facility for a control between 1 January 2009 and 30 July 2010 and who had undergone surgery for a melanoma, at least 6 months earlier, in areas draining to lymph nodes of the groin but choosing – for this study - the opposite side to the natural drainage. The following parameters of the US performed on the lymph nodes were evaluated: number and size, aspects of the outline, including any extroflexion of the outline and contours morphology, homogeneity and thickness of the cortex and aspects of the hilus, characteristics of the vascularisation of the lymph node at color-power Doppler. A second US examination was performed on the same area after at least 12 months. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: We found a very high number of patients (42/124) with lymph nodes that did not appear to be fully normal at US examination, particularly those with structural alterations in the hilus and slight loss of physiologic curvature of the outlines, with moderate thickening of the cortex. Of the 124 patients, who were followed for at least one year, 42 showed these characteristics, and none of these showed any progression to malignancy at follow-up. Based on these results, we can conclude that focusing excessively on such US findings could lead to the inappropriate performance of additional diagnostic tests, with a consequent increase in management costs and a worsening of the quality of life for these patients.
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spelling pubmed-35516612013-01-24 Ultrasound morphology of inguinal lymph nodes may not herald an associated pathology Solivetti, Francesco M Elia, Fulvia Graceffa, Dario Di Carlo, Aldo J Exp Clin Cancer Res Research BACKGROUND: Among patients undergoing follow-up after surgery for melanoma, ultrasound (US) very often reveals lymph nodes in groin area, that do not show clear characters of a metastatic lesion yet that have atypical US features, which could result in diagnostic uncertainty. We evaluated such lesions among a cohort of patients. METHODS: The study population consisted of patients who presented consecutively to our facility for a control between 1 January 2009 and 30 July 2010 and who had undergone surgery for a melanoma, at least 6 months earlier, in areas draining to lymph nodes of the groin but choosing – for this study - the opposite side to the natural drainage. The following parameters of the US performed on the lymph nodes were evaluated: number and size, aspects of the outline, including any extroflexion of the outline and contours morphology, homogeneity and thickness of the cortex and aspects of the hilus, characteristics of the vascularisation of the lymph node at color-power Doppler. A second US examination was performed on the same area after at least 12 months. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: We found a very high number of patients (42/124) with lymph nodes that did not appear to be fully normal at US examination, particularly those with structural alterations in the hilus and slight loss of physiologic curvature of the outlines, with moderate thickening of the cortex. Of the 124 patients, who were followed for at least one year, 42 showed these characteristics, and none of these showed any progression to malignancy at follow-up. Based on these results, we can conclude that focusing excessively on such US findings could lead to the inappropriate performance of additional diagnostic tests, with a consequent increase in management costs and a worsening of the quality of life for these patients. BioMed Central 2012-10-18 /pmc/articles/PMC3551661/ /pubmed/23078807 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1756-9966-31-88 Text en Copyright ©2012 Solivetti et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research
Solivetti, Francesco M
Elia, Fulvia
Graceffa, Dario
Di Carlo, Aldo
Ultrasound morphology of inguinal lymph nodes may not herald an associated pathology
title Ultrasound morphology of inguinal lymph nodes may not herald an associated pathology
title_full Ultrasound morphology of inguinal lymph nodes may not herald an associated pathology
title_fullStr Ultrasound morphology of inguinal lymph nodes may not herald an associated pathology
title_full_unstemmed Ultrasound morphology of inguinal lymph nodes may not herald an associated pathology
title_short Ultrasound morphology of inguinal lymph nodes may not herald an associated pathology
title_sort ultrasound morphology of inguinal lymph nodes may not herald an associated pathology
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3551661/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23078807
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1756-9966-31-88
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