I am glad they published this. Maybe more Drs and medical authorities will look into it now. While many stage I and II melanoma patients do not recur, these tumors make up such a large proportion of diagnosed melanomas that the absolute number of deaths among patients with low-stage tumors actually outpaces deaths among patients with more serious stage III or IV cancers, Gerami added. As a result, there exists significant room for improvement in predicting risk of metastasis for patients with otherwise localized disease. By better stratifying these patients according to their molecular metastasis risk, Castle hopes DecisionDx-Melanoma can help refer at-risk patients to intensive monitoring or adjuvant drug trials that could potentially improve their disease outcomes. According to Gerami, in the groups study Castles assay clearly demonstrated added value over current clinical staging tools. While the test did not identify every stage I or II melanoma that later recurred, and mistakenly marked some cancers that did not recur as high risk, it added significantly to metastasis prediction among patients without other clinical indicators of high-risk disease. We have the opportunity with this to identify patients that are classified as low-risk by staging, but actually have a high-risk of recurrence. This test has the potential to [pick out] those people and maybe give them the opportunity to see some of the treatments and go through the same protocols as those with aggressive disease based on traditional staging methods, Gerami said.
Posted on: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 08:09:09 +0000
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