Reduction in surgical interventions in melanoma

Melanoma surgery has evolved from elective lymph node dissection (ELND) to sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) and wide local excision (WLE) margins have come down from 5 cm to nowadays 1 – 2 cm. Recent studies have illustrated the low frequency of residual tumour cells in WLE specimen, particularly for pT2 or lower tumours, where 97 % of patients cannot benefit from WLE. Moreover, a cohort of completely excised primary melanomas did not seem to have inferior clinical outcomes to those who did undergo WLE. Biomarkers, such as clinicopathological gene expression profilers (CP-GEP), can stratify high- and low-risk disease and make therapy decisions, in particular in clinical stage I/II melanoma and make sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) largely redundant. Also SLNB needs to be reconsidered due to the lack of a clear overall survival benefit for adjuvant therapy in stage III. Moreover SLNB is redundant in stage IIB/C for decision making on adjuvant anti-PD1 therapy. Moreover the superiority of neo-adjuvant to salvage patients with macroscopic stage III over adjuvant therapy leads to sharp reduction of therapeutic lymph node dissections (TLND). Overall, the major impact of current developments is that SLNB might soon become obsolete and may be replaced by standard CP-GEP testing of the primary for clinical management, reduction of surgical interventions and simplification of follow up schedules in low risk patients. Thus, we are on the eve of a significant reduction in surgical interventions for melanoma that will come in the upcoming years.