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Melanoma's deadly march to the brain
Author(s) -
Othus Megan,
Moon James,
Margolin Kim
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
cancer
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.052
H-Index - 304
eISSN - 1097-0142
pISSN - 0008-543X
DOI - 10.1002/cncr.25716
Subject(s) - medicine , melanoma , metastatic melanoma , cancer , complication , retrospective cohort study , intensive care medicine , cancer research
The 3 articles reviewed in this issue of Cancer add to and update previously reported experience regarding the prognosis of melanoma patients diagnosed with brain metastases, but do not answer the important question of identifying which patients diagnosed with early melanoma will go on to develop this complication that most frequently determines the outcome in metastatic melanoma and how and when to best intervene therapeutically. If clinicians wish to use retrospective databases to help improve outcomes for these patients, then better biologic discriminators, based on careful clinico‐pathologic correlational observations, need to be incorporated and then validated in large datasets to define useful prognostic subsets.