![]() ![]() The immune system kills many of the cancer cells that reach the lymph nodes. The lymph nodes play a critical role: They filter out waste products, viruses, bacteria, and if they are present, cancer cells. It can also contain cancer cells.īefore lymph reaches the bloodstream, it passes through the lymph nodes. Lymph is made up of various substances including water, cells of the immune system, waste products, and sometimes outside invaders like viruses or bacteria. The system is crucial to maintaining fluid balance in the body. Among other places, clusters of lymph nodes are found in the armpit, neck, abdomen, groin, and chest.Įach of these lymph nodes is part of the lymphatic system, a network of vessels that drains a colorless fluid called lymph away from the body’s tissues and into the bloodstream. This subjected patients to a major surgery with a substantial risk for long-term complications.īut today, doctors can use SLNB to accurately determine if cancer has spread without the need for major surgery and the risks that come with it.Īdults have hundreds of small, bean-shaped structures called lymph nodes spread throughout the body. In the past, before SLNB was in use, to determine whether cancer had spread to the lymph nodes, surgeons typically removed nearly all of the lymph nodes near the site of the cancer. The lymph nodes are then examined to check for the presence of cancer cells. For a patient with breast cancer, for instance, the surgeon will remove lymph nodes in the armpit closest to the affected breasts. In this procedure, a surgeon removes one, or in some cases, a few sentinel lymph nodes-the lymph nodes to which cancer first spreads-near the site of the original tumor. To do this, your doctor might recommend that you undergo a surgical procedure called a sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB). It’s important for your doctor to know if the cancer has spread so that he or she can formulate the best course of treatment for you. If you’ve been diagnosed with breast cancer or melanoma, your doctor may have told you that the cancer could spread to nearby lymph nodes and from there, to other, more distant, parts of the body. ![]()
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