Identification and management of high-risk individuals

Author(s):

• Professor Graham Mann — Author
• A/Prof Anne Cust — Co-author
• Professor Diona Damian — Co-author
• Paul Fishburn — Co-author
• Professor John Kelly — Co-author
• Victoria Mar MBBS, FACD, PhD — Co-author
• Professor H. Peter Soyer — Co-author
• Cancer Council Australia Melanoma Guidelines Working Party — Co-author

In partnership with:

Melanoma Institute Australia

Cite this page

Mann, G, A/Prof Anne Cust, Damian, D, Paul Fishburn, Kelly, J, Victoria Mar MBBS, FACD, PhD, Soyer, P, Cancer Council Australia Melanoma Guidelines Working Party. Guidelines:Who is at high risk of new primary melanoma and how should risk be managed? . In: Clinical practice guidelines for the diagnosis and management of melanoma. Sydney: Melanoma Institute Australia. [Version URL: https://wiki.cancer.org.au/australiawiki/index.php?oldid=186052, cited 2023 Jun 1]. Available from: https://wiki.cancer.org.au/australia/Guidelines:Melanoma.

Last modified:
14 May 2018 06:06:42

Introduction

This chapter of the Guidelines considers the evidence underlying the identification and management of individuals at high risk of melanoma.

The Australian Clinical Practice Guidelines for Management of Cutaneous Melanoma (2010) recommended that people at high risk of melanoma have ongoing surveillance, and be educated about skin self-examination and appropriate sun protection. However, Australia has no population-based melanoma screening program, and neither the main observable risk factors, such as fair skin, sun-sensitivity and naevus (mole) count, nor the genomic variations that underlie them, are currently used systematically to stream high-risk individuals for targeted prevention, screening or early detection programs. A recent evidence synthesis for the US Preventive Services Taskforce concluded: “Future research on skin cancer screening should focus on evaluating the effectiveness of targeted screening in those considered to be at higher risk for skin cancer”.

The 2010 edition of these Guidelines highlighted the strong evidence that individual melanoma risk is influenced by a range of risk factors: some demographic (e.g. age, sex, geographic location), some marked by skin phenotype (e.g. pigmentation, melanocytic naevi), some only signalled by personal or family history of melanoma (e.g. a high-risk genetic background). It concluded that genetic testing of CDKN2A mutations had a role in highly selected familial melanoma kindred's. It provided guidance on the appropriate surveillance of individuals at high risk, from whatever cause.

In the current guideline, evidence and recommendations have been updated in three areas:

• the genetic basis of high melanoma risk,
• integrated risk assessment, considering all relevant risk factors, and
• evidence for benefit of identification and systematic surveillance of individuals at high risk of future melanoma.

Taken together, there is evidence that clinical practice should change in both the areas of risk assessment and surveillance.

This section covers the following questions:

• What are the genetic determinants of high risk for new primary melanoma?
• What validated models integrate genetic and clinical risk factors into an overall measurement of high risk from new primary melanoma?
• What interventions have been shown to provide clinical benefit in those assessed to be at high risk of new primary melanoma?