Wide Local Excision May Not Be Useful for Improving Malignant Melanoma Prognosis
Source: Dermatology Advisor, October 2024
Wide local excision (WLE) may not provide significant clinical benefits for patients with early-stage malignant melanoma and Breslow thickness may be the only independent predictive factor, potentially leading to overtreatment and associated complications. These study results were published in Melanoma Research.
Researchers performed a retrospective study analyzing data from patients who underwent surgery for melanoma at the Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Unit of Bari General Hospital between January 2013 and December 2019. They aimed to determine the usefulness of WLE for local and general control of malignant melanoma and to identify which patients would benefit from this procedure in terms of prognosis improvement.
The primary endpoint was progression-free survival (PFS), defined as the time from histological diagnosis to the occurrence of distant metastases, local lymph node metastases, or melanoma-specific mortality. The secondary endpoint of the study was to evaluate demographic features and melanoma histological data associated with residual melanoma after WLE.