title: Imaging in patients with merkel cell carcinoma.
abstract: Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is a rare, aggressive neuroendocrine tumor of the skin with a mortality rate of approximately 25% (Peloschek et al., 2010). Accurate assessment of nodal involvement in patients with MCC predicts significantly overall outcome (Smith et al., 2012 and Ortin-Perez et al., 2007). Due to the rarity of this highly aggressive disease, only a few imaging reports on MCC were published, and subsequently still to date no accepted imaging algorithm for MCC is available. For primary staging of MCC, general recommendations have included ultrasonography, chest X-ray CT, and MRI, but recent articles show that the use of sentinel node and FDG-PET/PET-CT is gaining more and more importance.
authors.affiliation: Department of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, Medical University of Vienna, Waehringer Guertel 18-20, 1090 Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Elisabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Enzenhofer
authors.forename: Philipp
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ubl
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Czerny
authors.forename: Boban M
authors.initials: BM
authors.lastname: Erovic