Patterns of Lymphatic Drainage from the Skin in Patients with Melanoma | Journal of Nuclear Medicine
2003
over 3,000 patients with cutaneous melanomas
In fact, we have seen an internal mammary node as a sentinel node for the skin of the anterior trunk in only 2 patients. One had undergone lymph node dissection of the ipsilateral axilla 20 y earlier as a treatment for lymphoma. This procedure presumably caused an alternative lymphatic drainage pathway to appear. The other patient had undergone an extensive excision biopsy of a melanoma in the epigastrium and showed drainage to a sentinel node in the right internal mammary chain as well as to a left axillary sentinel node.
This old study also shows a very rare incidence, with distinctly similar history to my case.
Melanoma Arising from “Ambiguous” Areas with Clinically Evident Unilateral Node Metastases Role of Lymphoscintigraphy and Sentinel Node Biopsy in Detection of Contralateral Occult Metastases Report of Two Cases
This is cases reported in 2016, using only scintigraphy.
The discussion mentions that only using the scintigraphy would have missed the ipsilateral involvement. however the ICG method have very high detection rate in the current studies for catching involvement of SLNs. which supports the argument of ICG usage for SLNBs, not specifically alone or combined with LS.
Melanoma recurrence in a previously dissected lymph node basin
this one shows rates of recurrence in the same basin, not the contralateral so i dont think it is relevant
case reports for contralateral lymph node involvement in melanoma remains insufficient.
Plus there is lack of good quality lymph drain image captured via STRYKER NIR camera in our case.