Melanoma-specific Mortality Due to Delays in the Surgical Treatment of Melanoma
Source: Physicians Weekly, January 2023
The following is a summary of “Delays in the surgical treatment of melanoma are associated with worsened overall and melanoma-specific mortality: A population-based analysis,” published in October, 2022 issue of Dermatology by Xiong, et al.
Uncertainty exists on how treatment delays affect melanoma outcomes. For a study, researchers sought to determine how surgical treatment delays affected overall mortality (OM) and melanoma-specific mortality (MSM).
The Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database (N = 108,689) was used to locate patients with stage I to stage III cutaneous melanoma. Time passed between the diagnosis, the final operation, and the follow-up in the included patients. The effect of treatment delays on mortality was evaluated using Cox proportional hazards and Fine-Gray competing risks analyses.