Clinical Study on the Sentinel Lymph Nodes of Squamous Cell Carcinoma of the Tongue with Negative Clinical Cervical Lymph Node Metastasis

Objective To explore predictive values of detection of the sentinel lymph nodes (SLN) of squamous cell carcinoma for cervical lymph node metastasis. Methods A clinical study was performed on the SLN during surgery in 21 untreated patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue and cervical lymph node N0 by injecting blue dye during surgery. During surgery, SLN was taken to conduct fast freezing pathological examination, and the results were compared to the postoperative routine paraffin section pathological examination results so as to observe the relevance between sentinel lymph node metastasis in freezing pathological examination and the cervical lymph node metastasis in routine pathological examination. Results Among the 21 cases, 15 successfully presented SLN (success rate 71.42%) and all of them centered in RegionsⅠ, Ⅱ and Ⅲ; 6 cases had cervical lymph node metastasis, and all of them were SLN metastases. Therefore, the total positive predictive accuracy of SLN for cervical lymph node metastasis was 100%. Conclusion The detection of sentinel lymph node (especially Regions Ⅰ, Ⅱ and Ⅲ) was of important predictive value for the metastasis of cervical lymph node in the patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue and CN0.