The use of conscious sedation for outpatient dermatologic surgical procedures.

Background: Dermatologic surgery has undergone increasing levels of sophistication over the past few decades. Commensurate with this demand, an established anesthesia technique called conscious sedation has been employed.

Objectives: Methods for performing office-based conscious sedation are described.

The combined use of propofol and fentanyl for outpatient intravenous conscious sedation.

Background: Intravenous conscious sedation is currently being widely utilized for outpatient surgery including dermatologic surgery. Even though this type of anesthesia is typically administered by a trained, licensed anesthetist, it is important for dermatologists who either intend to or are currently utilizing this type of anesthesia to be familiar with some of the methods and agents that are commonly employed.

Objective: Propofol and fentanyl are two anesthetic agents that are in prevalent use for skin and soft tissue surgery of brief or limited duration.

Effect of DETOX as an adjuvant for melanoma vaccine.

The identification of effective adjuvants is critical for tumor vaccine development. Towards this end, we examined whether the immunogenicity of a melanoma vaccine could be potentiated by DETOX, an adjuvant consisting of monophosphoryl lipid A (MPL) and purified mycobacterial cell-wall skeleton (CWS). Nineteen patients with resected stage III melanoma were immunized with a polyvalent melanoma antigen vaccine (40 micrograms) admixed with DETOX, q3 wks x 4.

Improved survival of patients with melanoma with an antibody response to immunization to a polyvalent melanoma vaccine.

Background: Melanoma vaccine treatment appears to slow the progression of melanoma in some patients, particularly in patients in whom it stimulates cellular antimelanoma immune responses. The relationship of vaccine-induced antibody responses to clinical outcome is less clear. The purpose of this study was to investigate the clinical relevance of antibody responses to melanoma vaccine immunization.