The incidence of malignant melanoma is increasing at a faster pace than that of any other cancer in the United States. It is estimated that people born in the year 2000 will have a 1:75 risk of developing melanoma sometime during his or her lifetime. Stimulated by novel lymphatic mapping techniques, the surgical care of the melanoma patient is evolving toward more conservative resections that can provide the same staging information but without the added morbidity of more radical surgeries. This approach promises to yield positive results in the age of health care reform, outcome measurements, and cost:benefit considerations.
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