title: Melanoma characteristics at diagnosis from the Spanish National Cutaneous Melanoma Registry: 15 years of experience.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The Spanish National Cutaneous Melanoma Registry (Registro Nacional de Melanoma Cutáneo [RNMC]) was created in 1997 to record the characteristics of melanoma at diagnosis. In this article, we describe the characteristics of these tumors at diagnosis.
  
  
  METHODS
  This was a cross-sectional observational study of prevalent and incident cases of melanoma for which initial biopsy results were available in the population-based RNMC.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The RNMC contains information on 14,039 patients. We analyzed the characteristics of 13,628 melanomas diagnosed between 1997 and 2011. In total, 56.5% of the patients studied were women and 43.5% were men. The mean age of the group was 57 years (95% CI, 56.4-57 years) while median age was 58 years. The most common tumor site was the trunk (37.1%), followed by the lower limbs (27.3%). The most frequent clinical-pathologic subtype was superficial spreading melanoma (n=7481, 62.6%), followed by nodular melanoma (n=2014, 16.8%). Localized disease was observed in 86.2% of cases (n=10,382), regional metastasis in 9.9% (n=1188), and distant metastasis in 3.9% (n=479). Independently of age at diagnosis, men had thicker tumors, more ulceration, higher lactate dehydrogenase levels, and a higher rate of metastasis than women (P<.001).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Based on our findings, melanoma prevention campaigns should primarily target men over 50 years old because they tend to develop thicker tumors and therefore have a worse prognosis.
authors.affiliation: Servicio de Dermatología, Hospital Ramón y Cajal, Madrid, España.
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Ríos
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Nagore
authors.forename: J L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: López
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Redondo
authors.forename: R M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Martí
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Fernández-de-Misa
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Soler
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008545:Melanoma / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000473:pathology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D011379:Prognosis; D012042:Registries; D012878:Skin Neoplasms; D013030:Spain / Q000453:epidemiology; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult; D000096142:Cutaneous Malignant Melanoma
keywords: Cancer; Cáncer; Epidemiology; Epidemiología; España; Melanoma; Spain