3.1 Patient characteristics
Characteristics and descriptive statistics of the final study population
are shown in Table 2 . Overall there were 13 (19.1%) patients
that progressed and 55 (80.9%) that did not. The average age of
patients at diagnosis was 64 years with a standard deviation of 14.1
years. There was a trend towards increased age in the progression group
but this did not reach statistical significance (68.2 vs 62.6, p=0.305).
There were 44 (64.7%) males and 24 (35.3%) females in the study, and
these proportions were consistent between the group that progressed and
did not (p=0.355). The overall distribution of TIL status was 10
(16.1%) absent, 7 (11.3%) present-brisk, and 45 (72.6%) present-non
brisk. TIL status did not significantly differ between the 2 groups
(p=0.132). There was no significant difference in the percentage of
involvement of deep margins (83.3% vs 64.8%, p=0.311) and peripheral
margins on biopsy (63.6% vs 48.1%, p=0.509) between patients that did
and did not progress. Of note, all patients that progressed did not have
tumor regression identified on biopsy pathology (100% vs 81.6%,
p=0.332) and a mitotic rate >1 (100% vs 72%, p=0.052) but
these did not meet the threshold of statistical significance. Mean depth
of tumor on biopsy was significantly increased in the progression group
(4.2 vs 2.2, p=0.008). Tumor ulceration was significantly increased in
the progression group (83.3% vs 35.2%, p=0.003). Only 2 patients with
type of biopsy reported had a punch biopsy, so the effect of biopsy type
could not be evaluated (p > 0.999).