Abstract
Aim: To validate the changes among the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) eighth staging system for cutaneous melanoma. Methodology: Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results database (2004–2014) was queried. Kaplan–Meier survival estimates were evaluated according to both AJCC seventh and eighth systems. Results: Overall survival was assessed according to the two editions and p-values for overall trend were significant (p < 0.001) for all scenarios. Notably for pathologically staged patients, the mean survival for stage IIC was lower than that for stage IIIA and IIIB. Likewise, among clinically staged patients the mean survival for stage IIC was lower than that for stage III (these findings were identical among both editions). Conclusion: AJCC eighth system holds comparable performance to AJCC seventh system.
Supplementary data
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Financial & competing interests disclosure
The author has no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.
No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.