Regional Lymph Node Metastases in the Prognosis of Melanoma

Abstract

A study of 101 cases of malignant melanoma with regional metastases observed at the National Cancer Institute of Milan between January 1940 and March 1964. All the patients underwent radical surgery of the metastases, which were confirmed histologically. 35 of the patients had received no previous therapy, whereas 66 had already had treatment for the primary tumor. Prognosis seemed to be unaffected by sex or primary tumor site. Overall five-year survival was 15%. In the cases subjected to block dissection or at any rate to simultaneous operation on primary tumor and metastases the survival was 20 % whilst in the cases subjected to previous surgery it was 10 %. It is thought that the poorer prognosis in the latter group spells out too limited surgery of the primary melanoma in a part of patients. These five-year clinical cure rates justify the policy of regional metastatic nodes removal.