Older Age is Associated with a Higher Incidence of Melanoma Death but a Lower Incidence of Sentinel Lymph Node Metastasis in the SEER Databases (2003–2011)

• Published in: Annals of surgical oncology 2015-07, Vol.22 (7), p.2120-2126
• Main Authors: Cavanaugh-Hussey, Margaret W., Mu, Euphemia W., Kang, Sewon, Balch, Charles M., Wang, Timothy
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adult; Age Factors; Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Female; Follow-Up Studies; Humans; Incidence; Lymph Nodes - pathology; Lymph Nodes - surgery; Lymphatic Metastasis; Male; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Melanoma - mortality; Melanoma - secondary; Melanoma - surgery; Melanomas; Middle Aged; Multivariate Analysis; Neoplasm Staging; Oncology; Prognosis; SEER Program; Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy; Skin Neoplasms - mortality; Skin Neoplasms - pathology; Skin Neoplasms - surgery; Surgery; Surgical Oncology; Survival Rate; Young Adult
• ISSN: 1068-9265; 1534-4681
• DOI: 10.1245/s10434-015-4538-8

Purpose Elderly melanoma patients are known to have lower survival rates than younger patients with melanoma. Paradoxically, a few recent studies have shown a lower frequency of sentinel lymph node (SLN) positivity in older individuals. This is the first analysis of a large national sample to examine the relationship between SLN metastasis and melanoma death across all age groups. Methods The U.S. Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Databases were queried to examine SLN biopsy and mortality outcomes in 158,813 melanoma cases reported from 2003 to 2011, the most current data available in SEER. Results In bivariate analyses of the 47,577 cases with coded tumor depths and nodal surgery, increasing age varied directly with melanoma death and inversely with SLN positivity, for tumor depths >1 mm ( P