Sentinel node positive melanoma patients: prediction and prognostic significance of nonsentinel node metastases and development of a survival tree model.

Background Completion lymph node dissection (CLND) following positive sentinel node biopsy (SNB) for melanoma detects additional nonsentinel node (NSN) metastases in approximately 20% of cases. This study aimed to establish whether NSN status can be predicted, to determine its effect on survival, and to develop survival tree models for the sentinel node (SN) positive population.