Married Melanoma Patients Present at an Earlier Stage

Source: Cancer Network, May 2018

Melanoma patients who are married tend to present at earlier stages of the disease than those who are not married, divorced, or widowed, according to a new analysis. Marital status was also associated with the likelihood of undergoing sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) for appropriate lesions.
“Early detection of melanoma is critical because it is associated with improved patient outcomes,” wrote study authors led by Cimarron E. Sharon, BS, of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Marital status has previously been shown to be associated with the risk of regional and/or distant metastases at diagnosis, but “whether any association exists between marital status and T stage at presentation among patients with clinically localized disease has not been determined.”
The new study used the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database to assess associations between marital status and disease stage at presentation. In total, it included 52,063 patients (58.8% men, 41.2% women) with a median age of 64 years. The results were published in JAMA Dermatology.