16 May 2021According to this recent trial, pembrolizumab adjuvant therapy provided a significant and clinically meaningful improvement in distant metastasis-free survival at a 3·5-year median follow-up, which was consistent with the improvement in recurrence-free survival. Therefore, the results of this trial support the indication to use adjuvant pembrolizumab therapy in patients with resected high risk stage III cutaneous melanoma.
16 May 2021According to this recent trial, pembrolizumab does not result in a clinically significant decrease in health-related quality-of-life (HRQOL) compared with placebo when given as adjuvant therapy for patients with resected, high-risk stage III melanoma. These results support the use of adjuvant pembrolizumab in this setting.
4 May 2021In this recent study, circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) was measured in 17 metastatic uveal melanoma (UM) patients treated with protein kinase C inhibitor (PKCi)-based therapy. It concludes that longitudinal ctDNA monitoring is useful for monitoring disease response and progression in metastatic UM and is a valuable addition to adaptive clinical trial design.
10 April 2021Skin cancer screening is routinely performed for members of melanoma-prone families. The prupose of this recent study was to evaluate the efficacy of surveillance. The study concludes that participation in a longitudinal surveillance programme providing skin cancer screening and education about skin self-exams was associated with thinner melanomas for members of melanoma-prone families.
9 April 2021According to this recent study, just over 40% of melanomas diagnosed on shave biopsy report a positive deep margin; however, this translated into a change in tumor stage or treatment recommendations in relatively few patients (7.7% and 2.3%, respectively), with no impact on local recurrence or survival among the studies analyzed.
8 April 2021According to this recent study, the inverse approach, added to the classic pattern analysis, significantly improves the sensitivity of human readers for early lentigo maligna diagnosis.
8 April 2021According to this recent study, patients with advanced age, poor histologic differentiation, and American Joint Committee on Cancer T2 stage are at highest risk of developing subsequent cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma. Close clinical follow-up after the initial diagnosis is recommended.
8 April 2021Results of this recent study enhance the knowledge base for pembrolizumab in advanced melanoma, with no new toxicity signals after lengthy follow-up of a large population. In landmark analyses, pembrolizumab efficacy was similar regardless of immune-mediated adverse events or systemic corticosteroid use.
8 April 2021According to this recent study, eccentric hyperpigmentation in lesions is a robust criterion for malignancy, since the evaluation of the whole lesion, through an intralesional comparative approach, increases sensitivity.
8 April 2021The objective of this recent study was to determine whether histologically confirmed regression was associated with better or worse survival in patients with primary cutaneous melanoma. The study concludes that regression was a favorable prognostic factor for patients with stage 1 and 2 melanomas, especially in those with thin and intermediate thickness tumors and those with superficial spreading melanoma (SSM) subtype.
