WEDNESDAY, July 22, 2026 (NewsDay News) — For patients with stage 1 to 2 Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC), local control with an 8 Gray fraction of radiation (SFRT) is improved compared to observation, compared with conventional postoperative radiotherapy (cPORT; about 250 published online studies), 20 in Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.
Emily T. Huynh, of the University of Washington in Seattle, and colleagues compared postoperative SFRT with observation and cPORT for stage 1 to 2 MCC. Local recurrences were evaluated for 108 patients in the observation group, 156 who received cPORT, and 43 who received SFRT.
The researchers found that observed patients had fewer risk factors than patients with SFRT and cPORT (on average 1.2 versus 1.6 and 1.6, respectively). Three-year local control for cPORT and SFRT was better than observation (97.4 and 100 percent, respectively, versus 91.0 percent), especially in patients with narrow surgical margins (≤1 cm). Overall, 21 percent of SFRT patients had adverse events, all grade 1.
“These findings support SFRT as a viable adjuvant treatment option for localized MCC that can preserve quality of life, particularly for older and primary head/neck patients,” the authors wrote.
Several authors have revealed connections with the fields of biopharmaceutics and dermatology.
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