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There have been several studies evaluating survival in patients with MCC. Most of these studies have examined only a small number of patients due to the rarity of MCC. It is also difficult to compare these studies because each has examined patients with different characteristics such as age, location of MCC, stage of disease and prior treatments.
Nevertheless, some generalizations may be made based on these studies. Most deaths from MCC occur within the first 3 years of diagnosis. Patients with stage I, II and III disease (e.g., local-regional disease) do better than patients with stage IV disease (e.g., metastatic disease). Most exciting, a new study showed that patients who have no lymph node disease as detected by sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) or other lymph node surgery have an excellent prognosis (Allen, 2005).
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Fraction of patients with no recurrence among 237 MCC patients with stage I, II or III disease. About 90% of patients who experienced a recurrence (relapse) had one within 2 years of diagnosis. Adapted from Allen, 2005.
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Disease-specific survival for patients who underwent clinical staging only. Clinical node staging does not provide optimal prognostic information (180 patients). Adapted from Allen, 2005.
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Disease-specific survival for patients who underwent pathologic staging by SLNB or other lymph node surgery. At five years, patients with no lymph node disease (proved by pathologic examination) had a 97% survival rate. Those with lymph node disease had a 52% survival at five years (145 patients). Adapted from Allen, 2005. |
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