A FACTUAL, NOT ARBITRARY, BASIS FOR CHOICE OF RESECTION MARGINS IN MELANOMA

Try as some might,(1-5) it has proved exceedingly difficult to dispel the notion that primary melanoma should be treated by arbitrarily wide resection margins. There was never any substantive scientific foundat ion for the traditional 5-cm margin, but for much of this century it n evertheless found favor in medical folklore. Current opinions concerni ng melanoma management in the dermatologic literature, while careful t o point out the limitations of supportive data, have continued the tra dition of offering arbitrary guidelines for resection margins.(6,7) Th e last 2 decades have witnessed the acquisition of sufficient experime ntal evidence to warrant further scrutiny of the practice.