Publications by authors named "Kata Czirbesz"

Introduction: In metastatic melanoma, despite the increased survival rates with new innovative therapies, therapeutic response is still quite heterogenous, not always durable. In the case of oligoprogression, several additional therapeutic modalities are available such as electrochemotherapy in the local treatment of cutaneous or subcutaneous metastases.

Objective: Analysis of our experiences with electrochemotherapy in patients with metastatic melanoma.

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Background: The introduction of immuno- and targeted therapeutic modalities meant a breakthrough step in the therapy of melanoma. As a checkpoint inhibitor, the more effective and less toxic anti-PD1 therapy followed an anti-CTLA4 approach.

Methods: From our patient pool, 222 advanced melanoma cases were selected, where anti-PD1 (pembrolizumab, nivolumab) therapy was initiated between March 2015 and December 2020.

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We investigated the efficacy and safety of vemurafenib+cobimetinib (V+C) and dabrafenib+trametinib (D+T) based on real-life data. From 2015 and 2018 we have selected 118 BRAF-mutated metastatic melanoma patients, treated with V+C and D+T in our institute. We retrospectively analyzed the overall response rate (ORR), the progression-free survival (PFS), the overall survival (OS) and the adverse events of the therapies.

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Purpose: To assess the prognostic role of sentinel lymph node status (SLN) in melanoma patients, a statistical comparison was performed with the application of already known prognostic factors, mutational occurrence of BRAF and NRAS in the primary tumor, as well as disease outcome.

Methods: Our retrospective single-center study involved 159 melanoma cases, who underwent SLN biopsy. The following clinico-pathological data were collected: age, gender, location of primary tumor, Breslow thickness, ulceration degree, histological subtype, mitosis count, lymphovascular and perineural invasion, presence of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, regression signs, mutations of BRAF and NRAS of the primary tumors, and SLN status.

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Ipilimumab was the first immunotherapy approved for metastatic melanoma in decades and is currently registered as a second-line treatment. However, new immunotherapies, in combination with ipilimumab, offer even better clinical outcomes for patients compared with single-agent treatments, at the expense of improved toxicity. The aim of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of ipilimumab outside the clinical trials and to identify survival predictors for treatment benefit.

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BRAF inhibitor vemurafenib achieved improved overall survival over chemotherapy and have been approved by the FDA and EMA for the treatment of BRAF-mutated metastatic melanoma. The aim of our retrospective analysis was to determine the efficacy and safety of vemurafenib therapy for BRAF mutated metastatic melanoma and subsequently to prove the clinical benefit for the studied 43 patients, based on real-life data. From November 2012 to October 2015 we have selected 43 BRAF mutated, metastatic melanoma patients, treated with vemurafenib.

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Dabrafenib is a potent BRAF inhibitor, which showed intracranial tumor activity. The purpose of our retrospective analysis was to evaluate the efficacy of dabrafenib for patients with melanoma brain metastasis (BM). We studied 30 BRAF mutant melanoma patients with BM, who received dabrafenib after local control of the brain between 2014 and 2017.

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Background/aim: The frequency of brain metastasis (BM) is up to 45-50% in patients with advanced melanoma. Our aim was to identify the risk factors for the early occurrence of BM.

Patients And Methods: A total of 333 patients with BM were identified from our database of 2,972 patients with melanoma between 2003-2015.

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Psychological problems may arise in connection with oncomedical treatments in three ways: 1. acute and/or 2. chronic ways, as well as 3.

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