Surgery for metastatic melanoma

Does Complete Resection of Melanoma Metastatic to Solid Intra-Abdominal Organs Improve Survival?

“…The median survival of patients with American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) stage IV melanoma is 4 to 8 months. [1][2][3] The majority of patients with distant melanoma metastases are treated with chemotherapy, radiotherapy, or both. Unfortunately, response rates to these modalities are low and seem to have little effect on survival.…”

Visceral lesions occurring during follow‐up of melanoma patients: a true place for other diagnosis than melanoma metastasis

“…It is worth noticing that a majority of IDPs consisted in the surgical resection of the suspicious lesion, with the advantage of a complete removal of a possible melanoma metastasis or another malignancy and with a potential benefit for patient survival in case of unique MelMet. Indeed, numerous studies have demonstrated a clear and sometimes durable survival advantage in patients undergoing complete resection of unique melanoma metastasis 16–22 . Patients with very limited affected areas and few metastases should be also considered for curative resection, especially if the pattern of recurrence of their disease suggests less aggressive tumour biology 18 .…”

Pancreatic resection for metastatic melanoma

“…The survival outcome of patients with visceral metastases from melanoma is dismal regardless of histopatholgical features, with a median survival of 6-12 months [14][15][16]. The results of chemotherapy are generally disappointing, despite the development of newer and more effective combination therapies.…”

“…The survival outcomes of patients undergoing complete surgical resection for isolated pancreatic melanoma metastases are generally better than those managed by non-surgical modalities [4,5,10,14,16,[19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. In a series reported by Wood and colleagues [16], six patients with isolated metastases to the pancreas were treated by complete surgical resection.…”