Initial management of cutaneous malignant melanoma.

Appropriate initial surgical management of primary cutaneous malignant melanoma is important since no effective treatment exists once the tumour metastasizes. The author reviews methods of initial treatment, excisional biopsy with adequate margins being the most common. He also reports results from a questionnaire survey on the type of microstaging used at hospitals across Canada. Two thirds of the pathologists who responded to the questionnaire preferred to use both Clark's and Breslow's method of microstaging. As a result, the author believes that the best histopathologic classification to use for predicting outcome has yet to be established.