Patient Outcomes
With a mean time from diagnosis to initiation of treatment of 31.8 days (range: 0-70 days), 21/23 (91.3%) patients remained alive and disease-free as of February 14, 2023, at a median of 3.39 years (range 0.11 – 11.8 years) of follow up (Figure 1). Two patients had recurrence, both remain alive and currently disease-free with salvage therapies. No patients died from melanoma. Due to the small size and nature of this study, we cannot claim significant survival differences between patient cohorts. Nevertheless, patients who received nivolumab (n=6) at the time of initial treatment did not have recurrence or progression of their melanoma. Of the 9 patients diagnosed at Stage III with at least 1 positive SLN, 6 received nivolumab and did not have recurrence/progression, 1 did not receive nivolumab and had recurrence, and 2 did not have recurrence/progression although 1 of them received interferon as part of the initial treatment (Table 2).