[Prognostic factors in metastasizing melanoma]

This paper evaluates the prognostic significance of various clinical parameters applied to 133 patients with advanced malignant melanoma, who were treated in two successive studies by the Swiss Group for Clinical Cancer Research (SAKK). All patients received poly chemotherapy. In the second study half of the cases were also randomly allocated to an additional unspecific immunotherapy with MER. The results of the combined chemo-immunotherapy are inferior to those achieved with chemotherapy alone. Patients achieving a partial remission live significantly longer than patients with a progressive disease. Further factors of significant prognostic importance are: the performance status, the sites of metastases, the localization of the primary tumor, and the sex. Based on the data, we propose new parameters for the stratification of patients in future Phase II and Phase III trials.