The initial success story of immunotherapy in the cancer clinical trial setting was reported in the treatment of metastatic melanoma, these advances have led to immunotherapy as standard care and have significantly improved the overall survival of patients with metastatic melanoma. The prognosis of people with metastatic melanoma was historically very poor with a 5-year overall survival of approximately 7%. This has significantly improved with the advent of immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy and targeted therapy resulting in up to 50% of melanoma patients achieving durable disease control.
Whilst people with metastatic melanoma reap the benefit of treatment advances, many survivors experience chronic toxicities and related complications after treatment, this cohort of patients is set to rise exponentially in the future. In the current landscape melanoma survivors represent a unique cohort of cancer survivors whose unmet needs relating specifically to the consequences of immunotherapy are poorly understood.
Aims:
Whilst this presentation will focus on the experiences of melanoma survivorship, the experiences of melanoma survivors is important for the future of cancer survivorship, given the growth in immunotherapy use across cancer types. This presentation will determine the need for survivorship programs to keep up with the advances of contemporary cancer treatments and the critical importance to understand and respond to the unmet supportive care needs of melanoma survivors in planning future health services and cancer survivorship programs for all.