Sentinel lymph node biopsy using indocyanine green (ICG) fluorescence imaging for N0 oral cancer patients （Review Article）

Abstract

Whether management of N0 neck in patients with oral cancer should be done by observation or prophylactic neck dissection is controversial, as 20-30% of patients have occult cervical lymph node metastasis. Because ac-curate diagnosis of any metastasis is difficult despite the various imaging modalities available, sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) using blue dye or a radioisotope (RI), or both, has recently been performed for these patients. However, SLNB using RI cannot always be performed at every institution. Therefore, as a method without using RI, we report SLNB using indocyanine green (ICG) fluores-cence imaging for N0 oral cancer patients.