Onkológia 6/2016

Malignant melanoma – etiopathogenesis, clinical picture, diagnosis and patient management

Malignant melanoma belongs to the most malignant and aggressive tumors due to its fast growing metastasis. Despite the fact that the incidence of melanoma has been on the increase for the past years and mortality to low and medium risk melanoma has decreased, the mortality of aggressive fast growing high risk melanomas has been stable. Diagnosis of “typical” melanomas, fulfilling ABCDEF criteria, usually doesn´t cause any problems. Particular attention should be paid to the problems of fast growing melanomas, which are very similar to benign lesions at the begining so they are often detected too late. Melanomas have two extreme properties: on one edge of the spectrum there are patients with small and thin skin lesions, who are usually completely cured by wide surgical excision. On the other edge of the spectrum there are patients with generalized metastatic disease. In these patients the treatment options are very limited and the probability to survive is about 6-9 months. The most significant factor for survival is the early melanoma detection.

Keywords: malignant melanoma, dermoscopy, differential diagnosis