Patients with malignant melanoma in the head and neck region benefit from CT staging.

What is it about?

We evaluated the performance of initial CT staging with regard to identifying regional and distant disease and to assess how the outcome affected clinical management, , for example, the decision to perform sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) staging.

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Why is it important?

Initial CT staging for asymptomatic patients with head and neck cutaneous melanoma seems to identify more metastases than has been reported for melanoma at other sites. CT staging identified occult melanoma metastases in 8.1% and clinically occult advanced second primary tumors in 4.5%. Consequently, preoperative CTs decreased the number of SLNBs, and the stress and cost of this surgical procedure was avoided in 12% of the patients.