Andruska N, Fischer-Valuck BW, Mahapatra L, et al. - Researchers used the National Cancer Database in this large multicenter retrospective cohort study to determine if larger clinical local excision (LE) margins and adjuvant radiotherapy were related to improvements in overall survival (OS) in patients suffering from localized Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC). They analyzed 6,156 patients with localized stage I or stage II MCC who underwent LE (median age at diagnosis, 77 years [range, 27-90 years]; 2,500 females [40.6%]). As per findings, OS improvements in relation to LE clinical margins larger than 1.0 cm were evident, which were independent of tumor subsite, receipt of adjuvant radiotherapy, positive pathologic margins, or adverse pathologic characteristics for stage I to stage II MCC. The observed OS in patients with LE margins of 1.0 cm or smaller who underwent adjuvant radiotherapy was found to be comparable to that of those with larger LE margins who were not treated with radiotherapy. The highest OS was reported in relation to the combination of LE clinical margins larger than 1.0 cm and adjuvant radiotherapy.