Melanoma Patient Subset May Not Face Same Risks Traditionally Associated with the Disease

Source: Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News, November 2022

Scientists using cancer registry data identified a subset of patients with early-stage melanoma with almost no melanoma-related deaths. The study “Prognostic modeling of cutaneous melanoma stage I patients using cancer registry data identifies subsets with very low melanoma mortality,” published in Cancer, may help clinicians determine which patients have a low risk of death from melanoma after removal of the growth, according to the researchers.

Although melanoma is the most serious type of skin cancer, most patients have high chances of surviving the disease. There is now evidence that more cases of melanoma are being overdiagnosed in patients who would never experience symptoms.

“[For the study], melanoma patients diagnosed in 2010 and 2011 with stage I lesions ?1.0 mm thick and negative clinical lymph nodes from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database were selected. Classification and regression tree and logistic regression models were developed and validated to identify patients with very-low risk of death from melanoma within seven years. Logistic models were also used to identify patients at higher risk of death among this group of stage I patients,” write the investigators.
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