Characteristics of Brazilian melanomas: real-world results before and after the introduction of new therapies

• Main Authors: Letícia Maria Modes da Costa, Camila de Souza Crovador, Carlos Eduardo Barbosa de Carvalho, Vinicius de Lima Vazquez
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: BMC 2019-05-01
• Series: BMC Research Notes
• Subjects: Melanoma; Skin neoplasms; Prognosis; Survival; BRAF inhibitor
• Online Access: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13104-019-4336-7

Abstract Objective This study is a characterization of the treatment patterns and outcomes of a Brazilian melanoma cohort collected of 1848 patients enrolled between 1996 and 2015. Results The superficial spreading subtype (35.1%) was the most prevalent, and the favoured anatomical location was the trunk (32.8%). The most common clinical stage was I (27.6%). The most frequent initial treatment was surgery (84.7%). Sentinel node biopsy was positive in 23.3% of cases. Chemotherapy was used to treat 298 patients (16.1%), immunotherapy for 67 (3.6%) and targeted therapy for 19 (1.0%). Distant recurrence was commonly observed (22.5%) and the mutation status of the BRAF gene was verified in 132 cases, with 42.4% positivity in this subset of patients. The melanoma specific actuarial 5-year survival for the cohort was 68.8%. There was a higher 5-year survival observed in metastatic melanoma patients who received immunotherapy and/or targeted therapy (34.2%) compared patients treated with just chemotherapy (20.0%). The survival analysis showed that sex, age, Breslow, clinical stage and distant recurrence were significant prognostic factors. This study provides a real-world description of how the introduction of new therapies such as immunotherapy and BRAF inhibitors is changing treatment strategies for melanoma in developing countries.