Melanoma characteristics at diagnosis from the Spanish National Cutaneous Melanoma Registry: 15 years of experience

Abstract

Background and objectives: The Spanish National Cutaneous Melanoma Registry (Registro Nacional de Melanoma Cutáneo [RNMC]) was created in 1997 to record the characteristics of melanoma at diagnosis. In this article, we describe the characteristics of these tumors at diagnosis.

Patients and methods: This was a cross-sectional observational study of prevalent and incident cases of melanoma for which initial biopsy results were available in the population-based RNMC.

Results: The RNMC contains information on 14,039 patients. We analyzed the characteristics of 13,628 melanomas diagnosed between 1997 and 2011. In total, 56.5% of the patients studied were women and 43.5% were men. The mean age of the group was 57 years (95% CI, 56.4-57 years) while median age was 58 years. The most common tumor site was the trunk (37.1%), followed by the lower limbs (27.3%). The most frequent clinical-pathologic subtype was superficial spreading melanoma (n=7481, 62.6%), followed by nodular melanoma (n=2014, 16.8%). Localized disease was observed in 86.2% of cases (n=10,382), regional metastasis in 9.9% (n=1188), and distant metastasis in 3.9% (n=479). Independently of age at diagnosis, men had thicker tumors, more ulceration, higher lactate dehydrogenase levels, and a higher rate of metastasis than women (P<.001).

Conclusions: Based on our findings, melanoma prevention campaigns should primarily target men over 50 years old because they tend to develop thicker tumors and therefore have a worse prognosis.

Keywords: Cancer; Cáncer; Epidemiology; Epidemiología; España; Melanoma; Spain.