Vernon K. Sondak, MD

The surgical management of the regional lymph nodes in melanoma has long been an area of controversy.

The majority of patients with stage III melanoma present with a positive sentinel lymph node in a clinically negative regional basin.

Intralesional immunotherapy of recurrent or metastatic melanoma, although its roots can be traced back a century to the use of streptococcal bacteria by Cooley, began in earnest in the early 1970s with studies of intralesional injection of bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) or Corynebacterium parvum into superficial melanoma lesions.