New diagnostic techniques in staging in the surgical treatment of cutaneous malignant melanoma.

The emphasis of the research on the surgical treatment of melanoma has been on the resection margins, the role of elective lymph node dissection in high risk patients and the value of adjuvant regional treatment with hyperthermic isolated lymph perfusion with melphalan. Parallel to this research, new diagnostic techniques, such as Positron Emission Tomography and the introduction of the sentinel lymph node biopsy with advanced laboratory methods such as immuno-histochemical markers, and reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction, have been developed to facilitate early detection of metastatic melanoma. The role of these new techniques on the staging and surgical treatment of melanoma is discussed in this paper.