Lymph node dissection, the standard surgical treatment for melanoma, does not increase patient survival rates, according to a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Lymph node dissection involves removing and performing biopsies immediately on melanoma-infected lymph nodes located near the original tumor.
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The study includes more than 1,900 patients with melanoma at more than 60 medical institutions.
The study shows melanoma-specific survival rate was similar in the dissection group and the observation group, which included patients who underwent nodal observation with ultrasonography.
However, the procedure did help physicians determine how extensively the cancer had spread as well as increased the amount of time patients were disease-free. his did not improve overall survival of the patients. Additionally, nearly 25 percent of the patients who underwent the completion dissections suffered from lymphedema — a swelling that occurs when lymph nodes are damaged or removed. Only 6 percent of the control group developed lymphedema.
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