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Older males have greater incidence of ulceration in melanoma

Ulcerated cutaneous melanoma occurs at a statistically significantly higher rate among men aged 40 to 84 years with deep tumors compared with different age and sex groups.

Researchers studied data from the National Cancer Institute’s large-scale, population-based Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database — specifically, the SEER 17 program, which comprises registries accounting for approximately 26% of the U.S. population.

The study included men (n = 23,068) and women (n = 19,279) who were classified into either “younger” (10 to 39 years) or “older” (40 to 84 years) age groups.

Melanoma was significantly more common in the older groups for both men and women.

Of the 5,106 patients with ulcerated melanoma, 3,206 occurrences were in men and 1,900 were in women. Overall, occurrences were more common in the older male and female groups than in the younger groups.

Ulcerated melanoma rates in younger males and females were similar at 301 and 276, respectively. However, ulceration rates were higher in older males than in older females (2,905 vs. 1,624, respectively).

Tumor depth levels were stable in younger men and older women. In younger women, rates were stable across the three thinnest tumor depths but then dropped in the thickest category, according to the researchers.

In older men, ulcerated melanoma rates rose with increasing tumor depth (approximately 1.4 occurrences per 100,000 for tumor depths greater than 2 mm).

Disclosures: This study was supported by the Char and Chuck Fowler Family Foundation and the Dermatology Foundation Career Development Award in Medical Dermatology (Meg R. Gerstenblith, MD), and in part by National Cancer Institute grant P30 CA043703 from the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center (Jill S. Barnholtz-Sloan, PhD). No other disclosures were reported.