Malignant melanoma in Turkey: a single institution's experience on 475 cases

This study was performed to determine the characteristics and the clinical outcomes of patients with cutaneous melanoma in Turkey.

The medical records of patients between 1991 and 2003 at Institute of Oncology were retrieved from the cancer registry.

Of the 475 adult cases with complete staging procedure, the incidence of localized (stages I-II) disease was 301 (63.4%), and followed by node involved (stage III) and metastatic (stage IV) disease with the incidence of 117 (24.6%) and 57 (12.0%), respectively. The median age of patients was 50 years (17-104 years) and male/female ratio was 1.1. Of 206 patients (43.4%) the diseases were located on extremities, 150 (31.6%) on the trunk, and 102 (21.5%) on the head and neck region. In cases with early/node negative stage, stage distribution was identical. The superficial spreading type was the commonest histology (52.2%). The Breslow thickness distributed equally, whereas tumor invasion aggregated mainly at Clark level III and IV. Half of the lesions were ulcerated and with low mitotic potential. In cases with the node involved stage, the majority of patients had only one lymph node involved. In metastatic patients, two thirds had distant metastases including lung metastases and half of them had single metastatic region. With the median follow-up of all patients of 5.2 years, the median overall survival of all patients was 62.2 months and the 5-year overall survival was 50.5%. Overall survival was significantly negatively correlated with male (P<0.001), advanced stages (P<0.001) and old ages (P=0.005). The five-year survival rates of patients with stages I-II and III disease were 63.6% and 36.6%, respectively. Nodular histology subtype, deeper Breslow tumor depth, extensive invasion, presence of ulceration, advanced stage, presence of relapse, being male and elderly patient, presence of visceral recurrence, and high mitotic activity were found to be associated with poor prognosis for overall survival in localized disease. The median survival of metastatic patients was 9.9 months and 1-year overall survival rate was 32.7%. Unresponsiveness to chemotherapy, visceral metastasis, multiple metastases and not given chemotherapy were the poor prognostic factors for overall survival.

The descriptive and prognostic factors in Turkey are similar to those in Western countries.