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Soo Park, MD
Soo Park, MD
Posted: Wednesday, October 9, 2024
Despite the clinical benefit of recurrence-free survival outcomes in patients with cutaneous malignant melanoma (stage III) treated with adjuvant therapy, the impact of this management strategy on overall survival remains elusive, according to a presentation at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2024 (Abstract 1079MO). After a 3-year interval of adjuvant therapy, no clinical benefit on overall survival has been observed, reported Hildur Helgadottir, MD, PhD, of Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, and colleagues.
From 2016 to 2020, a total of 1,117 patients with sentinel lymph node–positive stage III cutaneous malignant melanoma were recruited for the study. Patients were stratified based on the timing of diagnosis. Patients diagnosed between January 2016 and August 2018 were classified as precohort patients (n = 506), and patients diagnosed between September 2018 and December 2020 were classified as postcohort patients (n = 611). Patients were monitored for 2 years to assess their clinical outcomes.
Adjuvant treatment was given to 0.4% of precohort patients and 64% of postcohort patients. The most common reasons for not pursuing adjuvant treatment in the postcohort group included favorable tumor characteristics (64%), older age (20%), and the presence of acomorbidities (20%). Furthermore, the 3-year overall survival rates were comparable between the precohort (80.1%) and postcohort (80.9%) patients (hazard ratio = 0.92). Moreover, analyses performed in specific subgroups—including patients younger than age 75 (n = 867), patients with ulcerated tumors (n = 505), and patients with stage IIIB to D disease (n = 850)—comparing the overall survival in postcohort vs precohort patients revealed hazard ratios of 1.13, 1.21, and 0.96, respectively.
Disclosure: For full disclosures of the study authors, visit cslide.ctimeetingtech.com.
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