Publikation

Histopathologic abundance of pigmentation correlates with disease-specific survival in malignant melanoma but is not independent of current AJCC pT stage.

Wissenschaftlicher Artikel/Review - 20.07.2023

Bereiche
PubMed
DOI
Kontakt

Zitation
Aebischer V, Abu-Ghazaleh A, Metzler G, Riedl L, Garbe C, Flatz L, Eigentler T, Forchhammer S. Histopathologic abundance of pigmentation correlates with disease-specific survival in malignant melanoma but is not independent of current AJCC pT stage. Pigment Cell Melanoma Res 2023; 36:512-521.
Art
Wissenschaftlicher Artikel/Review (Englisch)
Zeitschrift
Pigment Cell Melanoma Res 2023; 36
Veröffentlichungsdatum
20.07.2023
eISSN (Online)
1755-148X
Seiten
512-521
Kurzbeschreibung/Zielsetzung

The increasing number of melanoma patients makes it necessary to develop best possible strategies for prognosis assessment in order to recommend appropriate therapy and follow-up. The prognostic significance of tumor cell pigmentation has not been fully elucidated. Hematoxylin and eosin (H&E)-stained sections of 775 melanomas diagnosed between 2012 and 2015 were independently assessed for melanin pigment abundance by two investigators, and the impact on melanoma-specific survival was calculated. Unpigmented melanomas (n = 99) had a melanoma-specific survival of 67.7%, melanomas with moderate pigmentation (n = 384) had a melanoma-specific survival of 85.9%, and strongly pigmented melanomas (n = 292) had a melanoma-specific survival of 91.4% (p < .001). In an analysis of melanoma-specific survival adjusted for pT stage and pigmentation, we found a nonsignificant impact of pigmentation abundance with a hazard ratio of 1.277 (p = .74). The study presented here provides evidence in a German cohort that patients with pigmented melanomas have a more favorable prognosis than those diagnosed with nonpigmented melanomas. Moreover, the abundance of pigmentation already seems to provide a first prognostic estimate. However, it does not appear to provide significant additional value for prognostic assessment according to the AJCC 2017 pT classification.