New Way To Predict The Spread Of Skin Cancer

A new way of predicting whether skin cancers will spread to other organs is published this week in the British Journal of Cancer. This means that resources can be concentrated on those patients most in need of close follow up, and lead to earlier detection of the cancer spreading.

Malignant melanomas result in 1,600 deaths a year in the UK due to the spread of the disease to other parts of the body. By measuring the density of lymph vessels surrounding a melanoma, scientists at Bristol University working with doctors at Frenchay Hospital in Bristol, have been able to predict which tumours will spread.

Previously, the best way of predicting whether a melanoma was likely to spread was by measuring its thickness, since it was believed that the thicker a tumour was, the more likely it was to spread. But many thin melanomas spread and only 40% of thick ones do.

The team looked for, and found, a far more reliable method of prediction than thickness. They looked at the density of lymph vessels around melanomas stored at Frenchay Hospital and saw which patients actually went on to develop secondary cancers within 8 years. They used this information to develop a better prediction for the spread of the cancers.

Dr David Bates, scientific director of the Microvascular Research Laboratories at Bristol University said: ‘We shall now be looking at a larger study of many hundreds of patients. If our findings are confirmed it will mean that the likelihood of a patient developing cancer in other organs could be predicted ahead of time with reasonable certainty. Resources can then be concentrated on those patients most in need of close follow up, and hopefully lead to earlier detection of the spread of cancer.’

All latest news from the category: Health and Medicine

This subject area encompasses research and studies in the field of human medicine.

Among the wide-ranging list of topics covered here are anesthesiology, anatomy, surgery, human genetics, hygiene and environmental medicine, internal medicine, neurology, pharmacology, physiology, urology and dental medicine.

Back to home

Comments (0)

Write a comment

Newest articles

Lighting up the future

New multidisciplinary research from the University of St Andrews could lead to more efficient televisions, computer screens and lighting. Researchers at the Organic Semiconductor Centre in the School of Physics and…

Researchers crack sugarcane’s complex genetic code

Sweet success: Scientists created a highly accurate reference genome for one of the most important modern crops and found a rare example of how genes confer disease resistance in plants….

Evolution of the most powerful ocean current on Earth

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current plays an important part in global overturning circulation, the exchange of heat and CO2 between the ocean and atmosphere, and the stability of Antarctica’s ice sheets….

Partners & Sponsors