Surgical standards in the primary care of melanoma patients

Excisional biopsy is recommended as the procedure of choice whenever there is suspicion of malignant melanoma. There are only few indications for incisional biopsies, which--in contrast to former opinions--do not worsen the prognosis. For nearly 70 years the debate about the optimal resection safety margin around the primary tumor was influenced by historical case reports and paradigms. Recently, controlled clinical studies provided new insights. Accumulating evidence over the past two decades showed that narrower surgical margins do not have any influence on the rate of advanced metastatic disease. Local recurrence is rare (approximately 0.1%) when primary tumors are thin and is seen more often (approximately 10%) in primary tumors of greater thickness (>4 mm). Analysis of the overall survival in randomized trials shows equal prognosis for malignant melanoma for narrow and wide resection margins. Due to these findings in-toto excisional biopsy for in-situ melanoma, a resection margin of 1 cm for primary tumors with a tumor thickness up to 2 mm and a resection margin of 2 cm for primary tumors greater than 2 mm appears sufficient. By this procedure primary closure of wounds will be possible in nearly all cases, morbidity and costs of surgical approaches will be reduced. For a long time it has been discussed whether prophylactic removal of lymph nodes ('elective lymph node dissection') is of benefit for melanoma patients. More recently 'selective' lymphadenectomy ('sentinel node biopsy', SNB) has been proposed to evaluate the status of the first draining lymph node ('sentinel node') of the regional basin. Several studies now demonstrate that the sentinel node evaluation for underlying metastatic disease reflects the status of the entire lymph node region and is therefore a useful prognostic factor superior to measurement of tumor thickness in primary melanoma. However, it is unclear whether sentinel node biopsy is of benefit for a better survival in affected patients.