View article

Background

The introduction of adjuvant systemic treatment for patients with high-risk melanoma has increased the importance of adequate melanoma staging. However, inconsistencies in outcomes between disease stages exist, as an increase in stage does not necessarily correspond to improved recurrence-free survival (RFS) or melanoma-specific survival (MSS). Therefore, there is a need for a tool that can predict patient-specific outcomes rather than grouping patients according to outcome.

Methods

A total of 4071 patients who underwent sentinel lymph node biopsy between 1997 and 2013 in four European melanoma centers were included in the development cohort. A prognostic model and nomogram were developed to predict recurrence and melanoma-specific mortality (MSM) on a continuous scale in patients with> pT1a melanomas. From this model, individual values for RFS and MSS were derived. For …