Trends in incidence and survival in patients with melanoma, 1974-2013

Melanoma is a rare malignancy that invades the skin and the mucosa. Research has been conducted on melanoma incidence and the survival of patients with melanoma; however, no studies in melanoma incidence and the survival spanning 40 years and based on a large population have thus far been reported. We obtained data on patients with melanoma for each decade from 1974 to 2013 from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. Disparities in survival by decade, age group, gender, race, site, and socioeconomic status (SES) within the aforementioned period were analyzed by comparison of Kaplan-Meier curves. We collected data on 133,996 melanoma patients in 18 SEER registry regions for the period 1974-2013. Our study found that the melanoma incidence increased continuously for the total population as well as for most age groups. The survival of patients with melanoma (except mucosal melanoma) also increased. This study showed increases in incidence and survival in melanoma across four decades in a large sample; meanwhile, the survival rates for mucosal melanoma decreased in the latter three decades, suggesting the need to improve melanoma diagnosis, broaden melanoma awareness among health care providers, and initiate the development of more effective treatments than the existing ones.