Lane AM, et al. - In order to ascertain whether there was meaningful improvement in survival rates after treatment for metastasis, authors compared survival rates after treatment for metastasis in a cohort of patients who were treated for uveal melanoma at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary (MEE) over approximately 30 years vs an earlier analysis. They observed similar survival rates in patients who were treated for metastasis in this recent analysis vs the earlier study. The most effective way to prolong survival could be the adjuvant therapies that were initiated at the time of melanoma diagnosis.

Methods

• In this review, experts included patients (n=661) who received a diagnosis of metastasis from uveal melanoma who were identified from a cohort of 3,063 patients treated at MEE between January 1982 and December 2009 and followed up through December 2011.
• They compared the patients with findings from a previous study of patients treated between 1975 and 1987.
• They compared the survival rates in patients who received treatment for metastasis with those who did not receive treatment.
• A comparison in the differences in survival rates was carried out with an earlier analysis that was completed at MEE.
• They also compared patients with hepatic metastases and extrahepatic metastases.
• In order to calculate survival rates, Kaplan-Meier analysis was used and the log-rank test was used to test for statistically significant differences between the groups.

Results

• Findings suggested that out of 620 patients with race information available, 615 (97.3%) were white, the mean (SD) age of patients was 59.71 (13.23) years, and 307 (47.3%) were women.
• As per the results, 3.45 years was the median time from the initial treatment of the tumor to metastasis (interquartile range [IQR], 2.0-5.57).
• Data demonstrated that, the median survival time, overall, was poor (3.9 months [IQR, 1.6-10.1]).
• Researchers noted that patients who received treatment did better vs those who did not receive treatment (median survival after metastasis diagnosis, 6.3 months [IQR, 2.96-14.41] vs 1.7 months [IQR, 0.66-3.5]).
• They noted similarity of this finding to that of their earlier study, in which median survival was 5.2 months and 2 months for treated and untreated patients, respectively.