Lymphoscintigraphy for Extremities' Oedemas and for Sentinel Lymph Node Mapping in Cutaneous Melanomas of the Torso

The common concept shared by x-ray lymphography and by lymphoscintigraphy was that lymph nodes invaded by metastasis would lose (at least in part) their physiologic function of accumulating either the contrast medium or the radiocolloid, respectively, and would therefore not be visualised (or poorly visualised) where they were expected to be present. This concept, initially conceived with the only radiocolloid that was available until the mid-1960s, colloidal 198Au, expanded then at a tremendous pace in the 1970s and 1980s after the more favourable radiocolloids labelled with 99mTc (Stern et al. 1966; Hawkins and McAlister 1969; Kort 1969; Scheffel et al. 1972; Schneider et al. 1973) were introduced into clinical practice.