Delays in Melanoma Surgery

Although most clinicians who treat patients with melanoma have had isolated experiences of delay from biopsy to definitive treatment, the extent of the problem has not been estimated on a national scale. Investigators used the linked SEER-Medicare database to assess the frequency and nature of delay of surgery for melanoma and found some intriguing results.

They retrospectively reviewed the cases of Medicare recipients who were diagnosed as having melanoma from 2000–2009, including all patients who had surgical excision (32,501 cases). Surgical delay was defined as the time from biopsy to excision. Most patients (25,269; 78%) underwent surgical excision within 1.5 months of biopsy. Among the 22% treated after 1.5 months, 2620 (8% of all pati…