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

Abstract

<b>Background:</b> Malignant melanoma is a cancer that demonstrates rapid progression and atypical clinicallyfeatures with a poor prognosis. Aim: This study was performed to determine the clinical characteristics andtreatment outcomes of patients with malignant melanoma in Turkey. <br/><b>Methods</b>: The medical records of 98patients between 2007- 2012 at our centers were retrieved from the patient registry. Overall survival (OS) wascalculated using the Kaplan-Meier method. <br/><b>Results</b>: In our study, with the median follow-up of all patientswith 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) were60.3% and 39.6%, respectively. The median OS of stage IV patients was 8.7 months and 1-year OS rate was26.2%. We showed that advanced stage, male gender, and advanced age in all patients with MM were significantprognostic factors of OS. <br/><b>Conclusions</b>: Compared with the results of current studies from Western countries,we found similar findings concerning demographical features, histological variables and survival analyses forour patients with cutaneous MM in Turkey.