The Relationship Between Melanoma Thickness and Time to Diagnosis in a Large Population-Based Study

Racial and ethnic variations in incidence and survival of cutaneous melanoma in the United States, 1999-2006

“…29,40 Delay in diagnosis (ie, the time between recognition of an abnormality and diagnosis of melanoma) has been found to be associated with the thickness of nodular melanoma but not with other histologic types in a large populationbased study. 41 The lower survival among nonwhite groups than whites in this study was mainly attributable to an advanced stage and thicker tumors at diagnosis among nonwhites. 3,8,42,43 Numerous factors may be responsible for delay in melanoma diagnosis including inadequate education on melanoma awareness, limited access or barriers to medical care, possible decreased suspicion by providers for melanoma among nonwhite patients, occurrence of lesions in less noticeable body sites such as the sole of the foot, and presence of race-and ethnicity-specific genetic alterations.…”

Clinical Skin Examination Outcomes After a Video-Based Behavioral Intervention

“…15 Having 1 whole-body CSE within the past 3 years can reduce by 14% the risk of diagnosis of a thick melanoma. 16 This may improve 10-year survival rates among screened (92.6%) vs unscreened (90.4%) melanoma survivors, 16 although lead time bias needs to be considered.…”

“…Clinical skin examinations have also been shown in other studies to demonstrate thin melanomas and reduce the incidence of thick melanomas. 15,[17][18][19][20] A skin cancer screening project in Germany reported a reduction in mortality rates from melanoma in a state offering screening by CSE, compared with states not offering CSE screening.…”

Do Not Let to Be Late: Overview of Reasons for Melanoma Delayed Diagnosis

“…Patients with I and II skin phototype were more likely to have tumors thicker than 1.5 mm than these with III and IV (27% and 14.6 %, respectively) (SchmidWendtner et al, 2002). There are some discrepancies in the relationship between delayed diagnosis and thickness of the lesion (Temoshok et al, 1984;Krige et al, 1991;Betti et al, 2003;Baade et al, 2006;Balch et al, 2009) and only few reports acknowledged it in relation to the all histopathological types (Temoshok et al, 1984;Betti et al, 2003). Superficial spreading melanoma (SSM) is the most common pathological variant for Caucasian ( Figure 1-B1,-B2), however a correlation between the stage and late diagnosis has been shown only for nodular melanoma (NM) (Krige et al, 1991).…”