Cutaneous malignant melanoma (CMM) is currently the most fatal of skin cancers accounting for 50000 deaths annually. Five distinct melanomas are described histopathologically: superficial spreading, lentigo maligna, nodular, acral lentiginous and mucosal melanoma. The aim of this study was to investigate the characteristics of patients with various types of malignant melanoma and evaluate histo...

Nail matrix melanoma, otherwise known as subungual melanoma, is unique in that the actual primary cutaneous melanoma is occult, being covered by the nail plate and the proximal nail fold. Fortunately, the concealed melanoma may produce melanin, which then appears as longitudinal pigmentation in the nail plate. Thus melanin-producing nail matrix melanoma has a distinctive ‘signature’ to the info...

BACKGROUND Melanoma is a malignant neoplasm with high metastatic disease risk and elevated mortality. Incidence of melanoma varies according to geographic region and genetic BACKGROUND Epidemiological studies indicate that acral melanoma (AM) is among the most common melanomas in the Mexican population. While extensive studies have identified genes associated with melanoma, little is known ab...

Next generation sequencing has enabled systematic discovery of mutational spectra in cancer samples. Here, we used whole genome sequencing to characterize somatic mutations and structural variation in a primary acral melanoma and its lymph node metastasis. Our data show that the somatic mutational rates in this acral melanoma sample pair were more comparable to the rates reported in cancer geno...

The acral regions of the limbs of Asians are predisposed to develop malignant melanoma, but giant-sized acral melanoma has not been previously reported in the Asian population. Giant-sized melanoma implies aggressive tumor invasion and so it is more difficult to achieve a therapeutic cure. A 56-year-old woman presented with a giant acral melanoma of the left thumb with concomitant bone destruct...

Dear Editors, We read with interest the article byMansur et al. entitled ‘Acral melanomawith satellitosis, disguised as a longstanding diabetic ulcer: a great mimicry’ (1). We believe that this case will raise awareness and recognition of acral melanomas of the foot in patients with diabetes. In this regard, we would like to contribute to the same topic by presenting another case highlighting a...

OBJECTIVE To report the different clinical aspects of malignant melanoma and their varieties in Iraqi patients. METHODS We carried out this study in the Department of Dermatology and Venereology, Baghdad Teaching Hospital, Baghdad, Iraq during the period from 1985-2005. Eighteen patients with malignant melanoma were enrolled in this work. The different clinical aspects and histopathological e...