A systematic review of clinical outcomes for patients diagnosed with skin cancer spinal metastases
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECT Surgical procedures and/or adjuvant therapies are effective modalities for the treatment of symptomatic spinal metastases. However, clinical results specific to the skin cancer spinal metastasis cohort are generally lacking. The purpose of this study was to systematically review the literature for treatments, clinical outcomes, and survival following the diagnosis of a skin cancer spinal metastasis and evaluate prognostic factors in the context of spinal skin cancer metastases stratified by tumor subtype. METHODS The authors performed a literature review using PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, and Web of Science to identify articles since 1950 that reported survival, clinical outcomes, and/or prognostic factors for the skin cancer patient population with spinal metastases. The methodological quality of reviews was assessed using the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) tool. RESULTS Sixty-five studies met the preset criteria and were included in the analysis. Of these studies, a total of 25, 40, 25, and 12 studies included patients who underwent some form of surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, or observation alone, respectively. Sixty-three of the 65 included studies were retrospective in nature (Class of Evidence [CoE] IV), and the 2 prospective studies were CoE II. Based on the studies analyzed, the median overall survival for a patient with a spinal metastasis from a primary skin malignancy is 4.0 months; survival by tumor subtype is 12.5 months for patients with basal cell carcinoma (BCC), 4.0 months for those with melanoma, 4.0 months for those with squamous cell carcinoma, 3.0 months for those with pilomatrix carcinoma, and 1.5 months for those with Merkel cell carcinoma (p < 0.0001). The overall percentage of known continued disease progression after spine metastasis diagnosis was 40.1% (n = 244/608, range 25.0%-88.9%), the rate of known recurrence of the primary skin cancer lesion was 3.5% (n = 21/608, range 0.2%-100.0%), and the rate of known spine metastasis recurrence despite treatment for all skin malignancies was 2.8% (n = 17/608, range 0.0%-33.3%). Age greater than 65 years, sacral spinal involvement, presence of a neurological deficit, and nonambulatory status were associated with decreased survival in patients diagnosed with a primary skin cancer spinal metastasis. All other clinical or prognostic parameters were of low or insufficient strength. CONCLUSIONS Patients diagnosed with a primary skin cancer metastasis to the spine have poor overall survival with the exception of those with BCC. The median duration of survival for patients who received surgical intervention alone, medical management (chemotherapy and/or radiation) alone, or the combination of therapies was similar across interventions. Age, spinal region, and neurological status may be associated with poor survival following surgery.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.015 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.014 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".