Efficacy of Electrochemotherapy in the Treatment of Cutaneous Melanoma Metastases and Rare Non-melanoma Skin Cancer

Abstract

Background: We aimed to verify the clinical efficacy and safety of the electrochemotherapy in melanoma metastases and in cases of rare non-melanoma tumors that were difficult to treat for the specific anatomical site or for patient comorbidities.

Patients and methods: We treated 68 patients (699 cutaneous nodules), 44 patients with metastatic melanomas and 24 patients with non-melanoma tumors, at the Melanoma & Skin Cancer Unit, Florence, Italy.

Results: We obtained an objective response of 89.7% (88.6% in melanomas and 91.7% in non-melanoma tumors), complete response 54.4% and partial response 35.3%.

Conclusion: This study showed that electrochemotherapy is effective in the treatment of melanoma metastases and in rare types of non-melanoma tumors. In particular, we successfully treated rare tumors as angiosarcoma, pleomorphic sarcoma, myxofibrosarcoma, sarcoma di Kaposi, porocarcinoma, sebaceous carcinoma, Merkel cell carcinoma, malignant blue nevus, undifferentiated epitheliomorphic cell neoplasia and metastases from thyroid carcinoma. No serious adverse events were observed.

Keywords: Electrochemotherapy; melanoma; metastases; rare non-melanoma skin cancer.