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Is the survival rate for acral melanoma actually worse than other cutaneous melanomas?
Author(s) -
Lim Youngkyoung,
Lee Jongeun,
Lee DongYoun
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
the journal of dermatology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.9
H-Index - 65
eISSN - 1346-8138
pISSN - 0385-2407
DOI - 10.1111/1346-8138.15201
Subject(s) - medicine , melanoma , hazard ratio , confidence interval , stage (stratigraphy) , acral lentiginous melanoma , survival rate , trunk , cohort , retrospective cohort study , dermatology , survival analysis , cancer , oncology , paleontology , ecology , cancer research , biology
It is still not clear whether the survival rate for acral melanoma (AM) is better or worse than that of cutaneous melanoma developed at other sites. We sought to evaluate the difference in survival depending on the primary tumor site of cutaneous melanoma. We retrospectively reviewed primary cutaneous melanoma cases diagnosed at Samsung Medical Center, a tertiary institution in Korea, from January 1995 to July 2017. The cohort consisted of 642 patients, with 389 non‐acral cutaneous melanoma (NACM) patients and 253 AM patients. The AM patients had a higher percentage of stage 0 diagnoses than the NACM patients (31.6% vs 6.9%, respectively). The factors associated with overall survival were primary tumor site, sex, age, American Joint Committee on Cancer stage, surgery and medical treatment ( P < 0.05). Non‐acral sites showed worse survival in multivariable analysis (hazard ratio [HR], 1.457; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.051–2.020; P = 0.0240). Among the NACM, melanomas on the trunk were associated with a higher risk of mortality compared with AM (HR, 1.883; 95% CI, 1.142–3.107; P = 0.0131). Acral melanoma was associated with a better prognosis than non‐acral melanoma, specifically when located on the trunk, in Korean patients.