Intra‐nodal nevi in sentinel node‐negative patients with cutaneous melanoma does not influence survival

BACKGROUND: Melanoma patients with intra‐nodal nevi (INN) and without melanoma metastasis in the sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) are generally treated as patients with negative SLNB. However, diagnosis of INN may be difficult and nodal melanoma metastases may falsely be regarded as INN. OBJECTIVES: Our aim was to evaluate the clinical significance of INN in the SLNB in patients with primary cutaneous melanoma on a nationwide level in The Netherlands by comparing survival between three groups: patients with INN and without nodal melanoma metastasis (INN group), patients without INN and without nodal melanoma metastasis (negative SLNB group) and patients with nodal melanoma metastasis irrespective of INN (positive SLNB group). METHODS: Data were obtained from ‘PALGA’, the Dutch Nationwide Network and Registry of Histopathology and Cytopathology, yielding a cohort of adults with histologically proven, primary, invasive cutaneous melanoma patients in The Netherlands diagnosed between 2000 and 2014 who underwent SLNB. Clinical and pathological variables were extracted from the pathology text files. Differences between patients with INN, negative SLNB and positive SLNB were analysed using Kaplan–Meier analysis. RESULTS: A total of 11 274 patients were eligible for inclusion. The prevalence of INN in the SLNB was 5.0%. Melanomas with INN had similar median Breslow thickness compared to melanomas with negative SLNB and were more frequently located on trunk and upper limbs and observed in younger patients compared to melanomas with negative and positive SLNB. Overall survival of patients with INN showed no significant difference compared with negative SLNB (median follow‐up of 5.7 years of all patients). CONCLUSIONS: As there seems to be no difference in overall survival between patients with INN and negative SLNB, the diagnosis of INN seems to be reliable. Current practice to treat patients with INN as patients with negative SLNB appears to be appropriate.