Stage 3A: Potential Benefits of Adjuvant Treatment
It is important to know that adjuvant treatment may not be recommended for all patients with Stage 3A melanoma. Patients with a sentinel node metastasis of 1 mm or less have experienced little benefit from the treatment, and were not included in the original clinical trials. Your medical team should be able to help you with any questions you have about this.
Without Adjuvant Treatment
Figure A: Stage 3A melanoma: melanoma specific survival without treatment
Figure A explanatory : The diagram above shows data for melanoma patients 5 years and 10 years after receiving a melanoma diagnosis. It is based on a study using a global international melanoma database from ten countries (Eighth Edition International Melanoma Database)1. It shows how many patients are likely to survive (still be alive) 5 years and 10 years after receiving their melanoma diagnosis.
For 100 people diagnosed with Stage 3A melanoma who are treated with surgery alone (and do not have adjuvant therapy), we would expect 93 people to still be alive five years after their melanoma surgery. This is 93% of individuals — shown in yellow.
After the same period (within five years of their surgery), seven people in the group will not have survived their melanoma. The melanoma will therefore have recurred (returned) and 7% of individuals will have sadly died due to it — shown in purple.
At ten years after surgery, 88% of people are still alive without adjuvant treatment. 12% of people will sadly not have survived their melanoma – shown in purple.