Sung Tack Kwon
Seoul National University Hospital, South Korea
Title: Surgical options for the treatment of Melanoma
Biography
Biography: Sung Tack Kwon
Abstract
Surgical Options for the Treatment of Melanoma: The surgical strategies for the treatment of melanoma have evolved overrnour experience treating 211 patients for the recent 20 years. While most of the features of our patients looked similar tornthose written in textbooks, we discovered some unfamiliar ones in our cases: The irrelevance of resection margin to localrnrecurrence and/or metastasis led us to reduce it gradually down to 2cm in maximum. Even less than 1.5mm excision marginsrnhave been employed for the recent 7 years for the 18 cases of nail complex melanoma, which showed neither recurrencernnor metastasis until now regardless of its depth and size. The morbidity between Stage 3 and 4 was not different. The rolernof prophylactic lymphadenectomy appeared unclear. Rather adjuvant interferon therapy might be effective but its effectrnneeds to be clarified. Still the nature of undiscovered metastasis remains an area to be explored. Therefore, our team nowrnpursues “preservative surgery” which emphasizes the optimal resection followed by functional and cosmetic reconstruction,rnespecially in the hand.