Melanoma breakthrough hailed

By REBECCA WALSH

A treatment for melanoma which is less invasive than surgery and allows patients to recover faster has been found to stop the disease recurring in half the people treated.

Professor John Thompson, of the Sydney Melanoma Unit, told a surgeons' conference in Auckland yesterday that the treatment, used on people suffering recurrent limb melanoma, involved injecting conventional chemotherapy drugs into the affected area rather than the whole body. Tourniquets confined the drugs to the leg or arm.

The procedure, which had been used for a number of years, was simple and safe and offered a promising alternative to people with recurrent melanoma unable to have surgery because of how advanced or extensive the disease was, he said.

"In the past the treatment was a huge surgical procedure involving a four- to six-hour operation with a heart-lung bypass. This new procedure takes 45 minutes."

Professor Thompson said a 10-year study of 350 patients found that in about half the cases the person went into complete remission.

"With ordinary drug treatment about 1 per cent will achieve complete disease control in a limb and that's being generous," he said.

Patients who had the limb infusion treatment could get up and start walking within a day. Side-effects were confined to the limb, which could become inflamed and swollen for a few days, but patients did not suffer nausea or hair loss.


"I think it's a major contribution. It means we can provide simple, safe, effective treatment for patients who we would otherwise have great difficulty offering treatment to."

Professor Thompson told the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons' annual scientific meeting that the same technique had resulted in a dramatic reduction in secondary melanoma of the liver.

He said the lifetime risk for Australians of getting melanoma was one in 30.

The figure for New Zealanders was about the same.

New Zealand's incidence of melanoma is about three times that of Britain and the US. About 1500 cases of melanoma, the most deadly skin cancer, are reported each year.

New Zealand Cancer Society spokesman Dr Peter Dady said the remission results were impressive, but follow-up was needed to see how long remission lasted, "and, most importantly, is there evidence of increased survival?"

Dr Dady understood the treatment had been used in New Zealand and said any technique that was less traumatic for patients was welcome.

Professor Thompson said the Australian study was about to become part of an international trial.