Melanoma risk doubles among childhood cancer survivors
Source: Healio, February 2025
Childhood cancer survivors are more than twice as likely to develop melanoma as the general population, according to findings published in Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Childhood cancer survivors diagnosed with an invasive form of melanoma exhibited a twofold increased risk for death.
“We have known for some time that childhood cancer survivors were at higher risk for melanoma compared with the general population but, to date, have not been able to tease out the relevant risk factors for melanoma,” Seth J. Rotz, MD, a pediatric hematology oncology and blood and marrow transplantation specialist at Cleveland Clinic and assistant professor in the department of pediatrics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, told Healio. “Doctors have long suspected a potential relationship between therapeutic radiation and melanoma, but this had never been proven because large enough patient populations with granular data were not available.”