Survival rate with melanoma improved

The overall survival of people diagnosed with melanoma, the most serious type of skin cancer, has improved over the past 25 years. Melanoma is quite curable if it's caught early; however, the improvement in survival may not be entirely due to early diagnosis. Researchers from the Eberhard-Karis-University in Tuebingen, Germany, analysed the survival of 4791 patients diagnosed with invasive melanoma in Germany between 1976 and 2001, in order to assess factors associated with better survival rates. The proportion of patients who survived for 10 years, overall, was 89% among patients diagnosed in 1990-2001, significantly better than the 80% of those diagnosed in 1976-1989. One factor that affects the deadliness of the tumour is its thickness. The researchers found that the average tumour thickness decreased from 1.07 mm in the period 1976-1989 to 0.75 mm in 1990-2001. The analysis showed that tumour thickness, ulceration, age, gender, anatomical site, and period of primary diagnosis independently predicted overall survival. Interestingly, the survival of patients diagnosed since 1990 seemed to have improved beyond the effects of early diagnosis. This could be explained by changes in unmeasured biologic features of melanoma, or by improvements in the management of this disease.