The relationship of marital status to survival from melanoma

Abstract

As an indirect test of the hypothesis that prior pregnancy has a favorable influence on prognosis in melanoma the relation of marital status to survival among melanoma patients was examined in data gathered by the Connecticut Tumor Registry, 1935–1973. Compared to women who had never been married, ever-married women with the disease had a slightly increased survival rate, but the difference was not statistically significant. If a difference between parous and nulliparous women in survival from melanoma truly exists, it is probably a small one, and could be due to differences in characteristics other than childbearing.