THE NATIONAL CANCER DATA-BASE - REPORT ON MELANOMA

Background. Previous Commission on Cancer studies have examined time t rends in stage of disease and treatment patterns for melanoma. Reporte d herein are the most current National Cancer Data Base (NCDB) data fo r melanoma. Methods. Two calls for data have yielded 20,165 melanoma c ases for 1985, 1988, and 1990 from hospital cancer registries across t he country. Results. There was a marked increase in Stage 0 (in situ) tumors between 1985 and 1990. NCDB data confirm a trend for more conse rvative surgical excision of skin melanoma. Use of multimodality thera py was infrequent. Conclusions. Survival data confirmed an excellent c orrelation between stage of disease and outcome. Early skin melanoma i s highly curable.