Consensus Statement: New Reporting Measures Aim to Improve CSCC Research

A new consensus statement from an expert panel supports the creation of standardized guidelines for retrospective studies on cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (CSCC).

"Despite this morbidity, CSCC is excluded from national cancer registries, making it difficult to study its epidemiology and outcomes," the authors wrote in JAMA Dermatology. "Therefore, the bulk of the CSCC literature is composed of single-center and multi-institutional retrospective cohort analyses."

The expert panel, comprised of 13 dermatologists and dermatologic surgeons, included specialists with over five years of post-training experience and significant CSCC outcomes research expertise. The panel achieved consensus on guidelines for CSCC data recording and analysis, with the goal of enhancing and improving the interpretability and comparability of future studies.

"Accurate data from the US remain elusive, limiting the ability to conduct large-scale analyses of cSCC," the authors of an accompanying editorial wrote. "Much of the issue lies in assembling a complete clinical record for individual patients and in processing text from notes and pathology reports into a usable format."

The new guidelines are expected to standardize retrospective CSCC research. The goal, according to the statement authors, is greater interstudy interpretability and also increasing the potential for pooled analyses. Standardization, they emphasized, is critical for advancing an understanding and treatment of aggressive CSCC cases.

"The recommendations in this report present the potential to standardize future CSCC retrospective studies," the authors concluded. "With such standardization, future work may have greater interstudy interpretability and allow for pooled analyses."

Source: Cheraghlou S, et al. JAMA Dermatology. 2024. Doi:10.1001/jamadermatol.2024.2242