Dr. Berman on Evolving Role of Surgery in Melanoma

Russell Berman, MD, division chief of Surgical Oncology at NYU Langone Medical Center, NYU Langone School of Medicine, shares insight on the evolving role of surgery in patients with melanoma.

Due to the development of systemic therapies that are effective for melanoma, such as checkpoint inhibitors and targeted therapy, people wonder if surgery is applicable and will ever be in need again for patients. Berman explains. However, there may actually be a newly defined role for surgery that the community didn't previously appreciate, he adds.

Often, surgeons would only operate on a select few of patients with advanced diseases, such as multiple in-transits, unresectable in-transit disease, or systemic metastases, with 1 or 2 metastatic lesions that were relatively easy for surgeons to resect with causing potential harm to patients.

Now, patients who experience responses after being treated with systemic therapies may only have a few persistent lesions. Therefore, they become surgical candidates, Berman concludes.