Abstract
BACKGROUND: The incidence and mortality of melanoma is increasing in many countries, including Brazil. Survival studies are still scarce in our country, but much needed to know and address this problem better. OBJECTIVE: To analyze the disease-specific survival of patients with invasive melanoma and to correlate it with clinical and histopathological variables. METHODS: Retrospective cohort analysis of 565 cases of invasive melanoma in a tertiary hospital with the objective of testing variables that could be associated with a worse prognosis, such as gender, phototype, thickness, histological type and presence of pre-existing clinical lesion at the site of the tumor. RESULTS: The worst survival rates were significantly associated with thicker tumors (p<0.001), male sex (p=0.014), high phototype (p=0.047), nodular melanoma (p=0.024) and "de novo" lesions (p=0.005). When all variables were adjusted for melanoma thickness, male patients (p=0.011) and "de novo" melanomas (p=0.025) remained associated with worse survival. STUDY LIMITATIONS: Retrospective study of a single tertiary hospital. CONCLUSIONS: Although the causes are still unknown, melanoma-specific survival was statistically worse for males and for "de novo" melanomas even after adjustment of tumor thickness.