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Merkel cell carcinoma represents an aggressive histopathological subtype of skin cancer with a high propensity to spread via lymphatic route. Once the benefits of the sentinel lymph node detection have been proven in malignant melanoma, the effectiveness of the method was investigated further on in Merkel cell carcinoma, as long as the two tumoral subtypes seem to have a common embryological origin. Surprisingly, the results reported so far in Merkel cell carcinoma are rather confusing, the method not being so far associated as part of the standard therapeutic protocol. However, it seems that the method plays a certain role in identifying the high risk patients and further tailoring the therapeutic strategy. This is a literature review of the most eloquent studies conducted on this theme.