Effect of BANS location on the prognosis of clinical stage I melanoma: new data and meta-analysis

Intermediate thickness (0.76-1.69 mm) clinical stage I melanomas at BANS locations (upper Back, posterior Arm, posterior Neck, posterior Scalp) were initially reported to have worse prognosis than similar thickness lesions at other subsites. Subsequent investigation did not support this observation. We re-examined the hypothesis in 156 consecutive patients with clinical stage I melanomas in this thickness range, who were seen at the Massachusetts General Hospital from 1977 to 1985. Patients with BANS lesions suffered recurrences at twice the rate of those with non-BANS lesions (28% compared with 13% at 5 years after excision of the primary melanoma), but this difference was not statistically significant. A meta-analysis of the effect of BANS subsite on death risk was performed using data from our investigation and five comparable published studies. The original data set which led to the BANS hypothesis was excluded from the meta-analysis in order to avoid bias. BANS location was associated with a 60% increased risk of death (P = 0.002). The difference remained statistically significant after elimination of any two of the six studies from the analysis. This confirms the influence of anatomical subsite on the prognosis of intermediate thickness melanoma.