Analyzing Factors That Lead to Worse Outcomes in Mucosal Melanoma
Source: Targeted Oncology, April 2023
Richard D. Carvajal, MD, deputy physician-in-chief and director of medical oncology at the Northwell Health Cancer Institute and R. J. Zuckerberg Chair in Medical Oncology, discusses the factors that lead to poorer outcomes for patients with mucosal melanoma.
Mucosal melanoma is a rare cancer that is aggressive in patients and often goes undiagnosed until the advanced stage of the disease. Like cutaneous melanoma, mucosal melanoma starts in the pigmented melanocytes cells and makes up about 1.4% of all melanoma cases. It is often invasive and metastatic but has yet to be linked to specific causes the way other skin cancers can result from too much exposure to UV rays in sunlight. Most patients diagnosed with this type of melanoma are 70 years old and the rate of diagnosis of this disease has not increased the same way skin cancer has overall.
According to Carvajal, the rate of survival for these patients is just poor with a 5-year overall survival rate from the time of diagnosis being just about 25%. In comparison, survival for patients with cutaneous melanoma has increased as targeted therapies have proven to be effective in this patient population. Here, Carvajal discusses which factors play the most significant role in making outcomes worse for patients with mucosal melanoma and which therapies have yet to prove their effectiveness. Moreover, this highlights the need for further study and discovery in this field of treatment.