The role of sentinel lymph node biopsy in the management of patients with early-stage cervical cancer

The sentinel lymph node biopsy is part of recommended surgical staging guidelines in patients with early stages of cervical cancer. High success rates of bilateral detection of SLN are achieved in sites with adequate experience with this procedure. The sentinel lymph node biopsy without systematic pelvic lymph node dissection is currently considered inadequate procedure for stages IB to IIA of the disease. One of the benefits of sentinel lymph node detection is extensive histopathological examination using the ultrastaging protocol enabling detection of small metastases (i.e. micrometastases). At the moment, there is lack of evidence about oncological safety of sentinel lymph node biopsy which might replace systematic lymph node dissection in the future. Prognostic significance of micrometastases is also controversial due to the lack of data about their potential presence in non-sentinel lymph nodes in cases with negative sentinel lymph nodes. This dissertation deals with the concept of sentinel lymph node biopsy in the cervical cancer and focuses on several topics. We have shown that the presence of micrometastasis is associated with significant negative impact on patients' prognosis on the largest retrospective cohort of patients ever published. Only 67% of patients with micrometastasis have..