We report a case of amelanotic malignant melanoma of the female urethra. The clinical course was unusually long and complicated by asynchronous resectable metastases to the lung and the brain. The patient died of generalized metastasis in spite of successful resection of the metastatic lesions and post-operative chemotherapy, two years and five months after the first presentation. To the best o...

Ovarian manifestation of metastatic amelanotic melanoma is exceptionally rare and can lead to the clinical and even histological misdiagnosis of ovarian cancer. We report on a 35-year-old female patient who presented with bilateral adnexal masses, as well as massive ascites. She underwent laparascopy and multiple biopsies were taken. She was histologically diagnosed with malignant ovarian tumou...

The clinical identification of amelanotic malignant melanoma (AMM) and hypomelanotic malignant melanoma (HMM) becomes difficult due to the lack of pigmentation and to the diverse clinical presentations. Dermoscopy is very useful in these cases, increasing the level of suspicion of malignancy. We report 4 cases of amelanotic malignant melanoma and hypomelanotic malignant melanoma with characteri...

Usually, malignant melanoma is readily diagnosed by the presence of melanin granules. Although amelanotic melanoma contains a few melanin granules, it is often difficult to differentiate from non-epithelial malignant tumours. This report describes a case of amelanotic melanoma of the vagina, which was originally suspected to be a non-epithelial malignant tumour, but was subsequently correctly d...

Malignant melanoma mainly arises in the skin. It represents the leading cause of death from cutaneous malignancy in the United States today.1,2 Fewer than 1% of all reported primary melanomas arise in the oral cavity.3,4 The cutaneous form of this lesion normally is highly visible, with irregular borders and dark pigmentation. However, mucosal melanomas may present a diagnostic challenge for th...

In the present work it was investigated if a spontaneous alteration of the native melanotic transplantable melanoma form into amelanotic form, connected with the tumor progression, is accompanied by changes of CD44 surface glycoprotein expression. We also tried to find out if there exists any correlation between changes in CD44 expression and IL-6, TNF-alpha, and IL-10 secretion. Cells of two h...

Dermatoscopy of melanocytic lesions has guided the decision of when or not to biopsy a lesion. The use of this tool has increased clinical examination's sensitivity and specificity in 89% and 96% respectively. However, dermatoscopic evaluation of amelanotic or hypomelanotic melanomas, as well as metastases, can be difficult. There is still no standardization for the analysis of these pathologie...

Melanoma of the sinonasal cavity has a high incidence of amelanotic presentation. Its diagnosis is difficult for clinicians and pathologists because of its hidden location and lack of pigmentation at the microscopic level. We reported a case of amelanotic melanoma of the maxillary sinus that showed aggressive extension to the oral cavity after extraction of the maxillary tooth. Histologically, ...