Definitions for "Sentinel lymph node"
Keywords:  lymph, tumor, node, drainage, snb
Biopsy (SNB): Procedure that involves removing typically one to three sentinel lymph nodes (the first nodes in the lymphatic chain). A radioactive tracer and/or blue dye are injected into a region of a tumor. The dye is then carried to the sentinel node (the lymph node most likely to be cancerous if the disease has spread from its original origin). Surgeons detect the sentinel lymph node by either spotting the blue dye or by measuring a node’s radioactivity with a Geiger counter. If the removed sentinel node is cancer-free, additional lymph node surgery may be avoided
The first lymph node or nodes to receive drainage from a tumor site and therefore most likely to harbor metastatic disease, if any lymph nodes are involved.
The 'sentinel' lymph node is the lymph node near a body organ or part of an organ which is thought to be the first that the tissue fluid draining from that organ reaches. So, if there is a cancer in the organ, this lymph node may be the one most likely to contain cancer cells if the cancer has begun to spread. Different techniques are being tried to identify sentinel lymph node. This has to be done individually for each patient. There is still no evidence that finding and removing this node makes any difference to the risk of cancer coming back. So this work is still experimental. It has been tried in breast cancer and in malignant melanoma.