Role of Surgery in Combination with Immunotherapy

Improvements in systemic immunotherapy are changing the treatment of patients with advanced melanoma and many other tumors. Surgeons may be increasingly called on to manage isolated sites of immunorefractory disease or to provide palliative surgery as a bridge to systemic therapy. Here, the authors describe the biologic rationale for using surgery in patients with immunorefractory disease, provide background on the evolving role of metastasectomy for advanced melanoma, and summarize data on the use of neoadjuvant immunotherapy. Finally, the authors discuss the direction of clinical research in this rapidly evolving field.