
A conservative approach to lymph node removal surgery may be best for people with melanoma that has spread from the skin to one or a small number of nearby lymph nodes, new results from a large international clinical trial suggest.
In the trial, there was no difference in melanoma-specific survival between patients who had only the lymph nodes to which the cancer was most likely to spread, known as sentinel lymph nodes, removed and patients who had more extensive surgery to remove additional nearby lymph nodes.
Patients who underwent the more aggressive surgery, the trial showed, also had far more post-surgical complications.
The results of the second Multicenter Selective Lymphadenectomy Trial (MSLT-II), which was funded in part by NCI, were published June 8 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“These results should be construed as practice changing,” Daniel Coit, M.D., of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, wrote in an accompanying editorial.
Source: NCI







