Relationship of spontaneous regional lymph node metastases to dose of local irradiation of primary B16 melanomas.

We evaluated the effects of local X-irradiation on microscopic or small macroscopic primary melanomas in the feet of C57BL/6 mice and the subsequent development of spontaneous femoral lymph node (LN) metastases. Doses of 30, 40, 55, 62.5, or 72.5 Gy often cured the foot tumor and metastases to regional femoral lymph nodes were relatively uncommon. Doses of 3.75, 7.5, 10, 15, and 20 Gy were associated with a dose-dependent regrowth delay of the foot tumor treated at microscopic size. Foot melanomas that were not cured spread to regional femoral LNs more frequently (P less than 0.001). The relative risk of developing femoral LN metastasis increased 2.55 times for each 1-mm increase in the anteroposterior diameter of the primary foot tumor in mice with 20 days of primary tumor exposure and increased 4.87 times for each 1-mm increase in mice with 100 days of primary tumor exposure. Although tumors treated with subcurative doses of irradiation had a longer period of time to metastasize to regional LNs for each 1-mm increase in primary tumor size, this variable alone did not account for the increased incidence of metastasis seen with irradiation.