Young Men at Higher Risk for Mortality From Invasive Cutaneous Melanoma Than Young Women
Source: Dermatology Advisor, November 2023
Pediatric and adolescent boys with primary invasive cutaneous melanoma present with more aggressive pathologic features that carry an increased risk for mortality compared with pediatric and adolescent girls, according to study results published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.’
Patients younger than 20 years of age represent less than 0.4% of all new melanoma diagnoses and 0.10% of melanoma-related deaths, although survival among pediatric patients is strongly associated with initial melanoma staging. The few available studies assessing pediatric melanoma do not focus on the impact of sex assigned at birth on clinical presentation or outcome. Therefore, investigators sought to characterize presentation and survival among pediatric and adolescent patients with melanoma stratified by sex assigned at birth.
The investigators conducted a retrospective cohort study using data sourced from the National Cancer Database (NCDB) from 2004 to 2018. Pediatric and adolescent patients (N=4645; infancy to 21 years of age) with primary invasive cutaneous melanoma were included in the study. Patients with multiple malignancies — including those with 2 or more primary melanomas or a primary melanoma and at least 1 other primary malignancy — were excluded, as were patients with melanoma in situ.