Survival for patients with thin ulcerated melanoma tumors was comparable to patients with Stage II tumors, who are currently treated more aggressively. This according to a recent study that aimed to investigate the variability in survival for American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) stage T1 thin melanoma tumors, defined as <1mm at diagnosis. This population-based series included 43,008 non-Hispanic whites diagnosed with cutaneous melanoma between 2004 and 2013 from the California Cancer Registry. Survival outcomes were estimated using the Kaplan-Meier Method. Cox proportional hazard models were used to estimate risk of death. Researchers found:

• At 12 months, patients with thin ulcerated tumors had approximately 6% lower survival (92.5%) compared to patients with thin non-ulcerated tumors (98.2%).
• At 24 months, this survival difference increased 85.2% and 96.1%, respectively and continued to increase over 2-fold by 60 months.