Evaluation of the eighth American Joint Committee on Cancer staging system for malignant melanoma of the skin

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.