Penile Melanoma In Situ: Long Term Follow Up.

Penile melanoma in situ is extremely rare. Various treatments have been reported with good success, however follow up is generally limited to 1 year or less. The optimal treatment regimen, pattern of disease progression and utility of sentinel lymph node biopsy are not established.

Melanoma of the ear: results of a cartilage-sparing approach to resection.

Melanoma of the ear is often treated by composite resection of the skin and cartilage and, occasionally, by total auriculectomy. This review analyzes the oncologic, functional, and esthetic results of cartilage-sparing wide local excision for melanoma of the ear. This retrospective study reviewed patients with ear melanoma treated between 1997 and 2002.

The role of lymphatic mapping and sentinel lymph node biopsy in the staging and treatment of melanoma.

The incidence of malignant melanoma is increasing at an alarming rate, doubling in women and growing by more 300% in men during the past 25 years. The importance of diagnosing nodal metastatic disease, with the ability to detect smaller and smaller volumes of tumor in the sentinel lymph nodes (SLNs) biopsied using immunohistochemical staining, has impacted the accurate staging and stratification of melanoma patients. The role that elective lymph node dissection now plays in staging the melanoma patient and determining subsequent treatment has been greatly diminished in favor of less morbid and less invasive techniques that have a higher degree of accuracy in detecting occult nodal disease.

Electrically stimulated rectus abdominis muscle flap to achieve enterostomal continence: development of a functional canine model.

Background: Dynamic myoplasty has many clinical applications and has proven to be a versatile surgical procedure with great promise. This procedure has been used to achieve fecal/urinary continence, as in the dynamic graciloplasty, and to augment cardiac ventricular function, as is commonly seen with dynamic latissimus cardiomyoplasty. In the present study, the authors describe a functional innovative island flap sphincter created from the rectus abdominis muscle in a large-animal model to provide stomal continence for future clinical studies.

The acute and delayed effects of hydrostatic dilation on rat femoral arteries.

The technique of intraoperative vessel dilation is sometimes used to facilitate microvascular anastomosis and prevent vasospasm. Although this technique is not new, its application has not gained widespread acceptance mainly due to concerns raised about potential damage to the vessels acutely and during the postoperative period, leading to decreased vessel patency. The goal of this study was to determine the acute and delayed histologic effects of hydrostatic dilation on rat femoral arteries and to compare the response of dilated arteries to vasodilating and vasoconstricting agents.