Brain metastases during follow-up of patients with resected cutaneous melanoma

Melanoma is among the most common tumors that disseminate to the brain. We analyzed patients with resected early-stage cutaneous melanoma who developed sole brain metastases and brain metastases accompanying other organ spreads and interpreted the clinical characteristics of these patients in this study. A total of 457 patients who developed any organ metastases during or after adjuvant therapy or in follow-up were included in the analysis. A total of 55 (12%) patients had brain metastases (M1d), and 402 patients had other (M1a,b,c) metastases. The majority of brain metastases ( n  = 36, 65.4%) were accompanied by other organ metastases, only 19 patients had sole brain metastases. Brain metastases were mostly in men (76.4 vs. 61.9%, P  = 0.03), and extracerebral dissemination was more commonly associated with acral lentiginous melanoma histopathology (16.7 vs. 4.7%, P  = 0.04). Brain metastasis was found to be associated with shorter survival (median survivals were 6.0 vs. 12.45 months, respectively, P  = 0.0001). However, there was no difference in survival between patients with isolated brain involvements and patients with brain metastases accompanied by spread to other organs (median survivals were 6.0 vs. 5.85 months, respectively, P  = 0.1). In conclusion, brain metastases are a very small portion of relapsed melanoma patients, and the numbers of isolated brain metastases are even smaller, thus the significance of routine brain scans for early detection of brain involvement in the follow-up of patients might be questionable and unnecessary.