Early-Stage Melanoma Micrometastases: Outcomes and Risk Stratification
Source: Physicians Weekly, January 2023
The following is a summary of “Clinical Outcomes and Risk Stratification of Early-Stage Melanoma Micrometastases From an International Multicenter Study: Implications for the Management of American Joint Committee on Cancer IIIA Disease” published in the December 2022 issue of Oncology by Moncrieff et al.
There was a debate concerning the justifications for administering adjuvant systemic therapy to patients with early-stage melanomas with sentinel node (SN) micrometastases with modest disease burden or stage IIIA disease, according to the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC; eighth edition). For a study, researchers sought to identify AJCC stage IIIA patients with high-risk SN positivity who were more likely to benefit from adjuvant systemic therapy.
Nine high-volume cancer hospitals across three continents (North America, Europe, and Australia) were used to source patients for the study. All underwent SN biopsy between 2005 and 2020 and were adult patients with pathologic stage pT1b/pT2a primary cutaneous melanomas. The features of the original tumor, the SN, and the patient data were examined.