Multicenter Evaluation of Patients with Cutaneous Malignant Melanoma in Turkey: MELAS Study

Abstract

Background: Malignant melanoma is a cancer that demonstrates rapid progression and atypical clinically features with a poor prognosis. Aim: This study was performed to determine the clinical characteristics and treatment outcomes of patients with malignant melanoma in Turkey. Methods: The medical records of 98 patients between 2007-2012 at our centers were retrieved from the patient registry. Overall survival (OS) was calculated using the Kaplan-Meier method. Results: In our study, with the median follow-up of all patients with cutaneous MM of 46.3 months, the median OS rate of all cases was 43.6 months and 5-year OS was 48.6%. However, five-year OS rates of patients with localized disease (stage I-II) and node involvement (stage III) were 60.3% and 39.6%, respectively. The median OS of stage IV patients was 8.7 months and 1-year OS rate was 26.2%. We showed that advanced stage, male gender, and advanced age in all patients with MM were significant prognostic factors of OS. Conclusions: Compared with the results of current studies from Western countries, we found similar findings concerning demographical features, histological variables and survival analyses for our patients with cutaneous MM in Turkey.