Perioperative treatment strategies for advanced melanoma and nonmelanoma skin cancers.

Abstract

Perioperative therapies, including neoadjuvant and neoadjuvant plus adjuvant, are developing and promising approaches to improve the management of cutaneous malignancies. This review summarizes key studies of perioperative therapies to guide clinical practice in the treatment of melanoma, cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, basal cell carcinoma, and Merkel cell carcinoma. The clinical trials and real-world studies reviewed routinely demonstrated that perioperative strategies, especially with immune checkpoint inhibitors, yielded high pathologic response rates, improved survival, reduced treatment side effects, and decreased surgical morbidity. Moreover, perioperative therapies could enable treatment step down and even the avoidance of surgery altogether.