Impact of time to surgical treatment in Merkel cell carcinoma: Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results–based population study

To the Editor: Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is an aggressive neuroendocrine malignancy with high rates of local recurrence, metastasis, and death.1 Time from biopsy to surgical resection (treatment interval) has been associated with decreased risk of metastases and improved survival in a number of malignancies.2 The effect of treatment interval in MCC is less clear.3,4 With the introduction of American Joint Committee on Cancer Eighth Edition (AJCC-8) staging, we sought to characterize the impact of treatment interval on overall and disease-specific mortality in MCC.