NEW YORK — Symptoms of early-stage cutaneous lymphoma (CL) often mimic nonmalignant skin diseases like psoriasis or eczema, leading to common misdiagnoses and missed opportunities for appropriate treatment.
While most patients with CL do not advance to late-stage, life-threatening disease, for the subset of patients who do progress, a lack of prognostic tools and the need for customized treatment make disease management challenging, according to Patrick M. Brunner, MD, MSc, associate professor of dermatology and director of the cutaneous lymphoma clinic at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital, New York City.
"Cutaneous lymphoma is difficult to diagnose. Even when it is properly diagnosed, we do not have widespread use of biomarkers to predict if a patient will progress to a dangerous disease state," Brunner said at the annual Mount Sinai Winter Symposium on Advances in Medical and Surgical Dermatology, where he presented an update on advances and areas of unmet need in cutaneous lymphomas.
Brunner said that an estimated 20%-30% of patients with CL progress to an advanced stage but cautioned that the 5-year survival rate in these patients can be as low as 30%. Although predictive tools to identify those who are at risk of disease progression are in their infancy, the development of such tools is crucial for improving patient outcomes.
