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Hensin Tsao, MD, PhD; Myra Feldman, BS; Julie E. Fullerton, BA; Arthur J. Sober, MD; Daniel Rosenthal, MD; William Goggins, PhD

Arch Dermatol. 2004;140:67-70.

Objective  To determine if earlier detection of pulmonary metastasis by routine chest radiography (CR) is associated with a prolonged survival.

Design  A computer-assisted search of all CR reports on patients with melanoma between 1990 and 1994 at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. Positive or suspicious findings for pulmonary metastasis were further pursued through review of medical records and tumor registry files.

Setting and Patients  A hospital-based population of patients with melanoma undergoing routine CR at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Results  Overall, of 994 patients, 75 were identified as having pulmonary metastases by CR (1937 total chest radiographs). In addition, there were 63 patients with suspicious findings that were later shown to be false positive. Chest radiographs provided the initial evidence of metastases in 41 asymptomatic individuals. Thirty-four patients had known melanoma metastases to other sites at the time of the first abnormal chest radiograph. Survival after identification of pulmonary metastasis did not differ significantly between the 2 groups.

Conclusions  In this study, there was no evidence to support the notion that earlier detection of pulmonary metastasis in otherwise asymptomatic individuals confers a survival advantage in an unselected melanoma population.

From the Department of Dermatology (Drs Tsao and Sober and Ms Fullerton), MGH Melanoma Center (Dr Tsao and Ms Fullerton), Wellman Laboratories (Dr Tsao), and Department of Radiology (Dr Rosenthal), Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston; State University of New York at Buffalo School of Medicine (Ms Feldman); and Department of Mathematics, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong (Dr Goggins). The authors have no relevant financial interest in this article.

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