Doctors and patients can now benefit from a calculator tool which helps assess the prognosis in individual melanoma cases.

Melanoma is the most potentially deadly form of skin cancer. After surgery, the patient might be offered treatment with the drug interferon, but this is of limited value if the prognosis is poor. Both doctor and patient would like better information on survival rates, to help inform their decisions on further treatment.

Following on the development of a similar tool for breast cancer, Mayo Clinic researchers now announce a user-friendly calculator for prognosis in melanoma. It draws on data from 17,600 melanoma patients, and relies on characteristics of the patient's primary tumour and information on lymph node involvement. The tool uses a mathematical formula to compute the patient's chance of living for five years with no cancer both with and without interferon therapy.

Source

Mayo Clinic Proceedings October 2002