What are the chances for cure or control of Merkel cell carcinoma?

There have been several studies evaluating survival in patients with MCC. Most of these studies have examined only a small number of patients due to the rarity of MCC. It is also difficult to compare these studies because each has examined patients with different characteristics such as age, location of MCC, stage of disease and prior treatments.

Nevertheless, some generalizations may be made based on these studies. Most deaths from MCC occur within the first 3 years of diagnosis. Patients with stage I and II disease (e.g., local-regional disease) do better than patients with stage III disease (e.g., metastatic disease). Most exciting, a new study showed that patients who have no lymph node disease as detected by sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) or other lymph node surgery have an excellent prognosis

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