"March 14, 2011 (Hollywood, Florida) — The 2011 updated National Comprehensive Cancer Center (NCCN) guidelines for melanoma say that routine imaging is no longer required for stage IIa melanoma patients who have negative lymph nodes.
"We do not recommend a [computed tomography] scan for these patients. They don't have to have it. We have decided that there is no compromise in their care," committee chair Daniel G. Coit, MD, professor of medicine at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, told Medscape Medical News here at the NCCN 16th Annual Conference.
"It's a category 2a recommendation, meaning that there was general agreement among the committee but very little data in the form of prospective randomized trials."
Stage IIa melanoma patients are those with melanomas between 2 and 4 mm thick and no lymph node involvement."
--Medscape
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