Deciding to trust, coming to believe: sentinel lymph node assessment in lung cancer

The sentinel lymph node (SLN)—defined as the lymph node that first receives lymphatic drainage from a primary tumor—is the most probable site of early micrometastasis. When the SLN is free of metastatic cells, it is unlikely that cancer has spread to any other, more distant nodes. The clinical impact of SLN assessment has been well documented for breast cancer and melanoma (1,2).