Hyperthermic antiblastic perfusion with DTIC in stage IIIA-IIIAB melanoma of the extremities.

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of DTIC when employed at a local level in hyperthermic antiblastic perfusion (HAP) for stage IIIA-IIIAB melanoma patients. Twenty-seven consecutive patients have been treated at the National Cancer Institute of Milan from October 1983 to June 1985. All the patients were submitted to HAP at 40 degrees for 60' with DTIC at the dosage of 2.5 g/m2 [corrected] for lower extremities and 1.5 g/m2 [corrected] for upper extremities. We observed a complete local response in three patients and a partial local response 50% in seven patients, 10 patients has a response less than 50% and 4 patients did not show any response. After surgical removal of the residual tumor when possible, 14 patients are alive without detectable disease while 11 are alive with disease and two dead for progression. No serious complications were observed. These data indicate that DTIC seems able to obtain in HAP, results superimposable to L-PAM without any significant toxicity.