I just returned from the International Conference on melanoma held in Vienna. Here's the latest on the AJCC/UICC Staging System to be released in 2009. You might want to check out the Website on Individualized Melanoma Patient Outcome Prediction Tools developed by Seng-jaw Soong et al, referenced below. It's pretty cool!

The major change in the 2009 AJCC/UICC Melanoma Staging System is the inclusion of mitotic activity in the primary as important prognostic factor. Mitotic activity is histologically defined as mitoses/mm2. A mitotic rate equal of greater than 1/mm2 denotes a melanoma at higher risk for metastasis. A test version of a program to determine the 5- and 10- year survival for an individual patient is available on the following Website: www.melanomaprognosis.org. For patients with localized melanoma (Stage I/II melanoma), the significant prognostic factors were found to be gender, age, lesion site, tumor thickness, and ulceration and these are included in the predictive model. For patients with regional metastasis (Stage III melanoma), the significant factors were the same, with the added factors of tumor burden and number of nodes involved with melanoma. The Website allows one to insert these significant prognostic factors for an individual patient and it will use these factors to report estimated 5- and 10- year survival rates and confidence intervals.

Lynn Spitler