GENDER AND CUTANEOUS MELANOMA

Current evidence suggesting that a patient's sex is relevant to the pr ogression of cutaneous melanoma is largely epidemiological. Although d atabases of patients with melanomas have for many years shown a surviv al advantage for female patients with primary melanoma, it has been di fficult to evaluate the contribution of other known prognostic variabl es such as thickness and site of the primary tumour, factors which als o tend to be related to sex. In addition, there are data from a limite d number of experimental studies and clinical trials which support the concept of female survival superiority in melanoma, This paper attemp ts to summarize the evidence for gender being an important factor in m elanoma survival.