Cutaneous melanoma in a 9-year-old girl: case report and review of literature

Abstract

Melanoma in children is a rare entity with an estimated incidence of one/million/year. Only 1.3% of melanomas reported in the United States of America affect individuals under the age of 20 years, and this neoplasm accounts for only 0.9% of all malignancies in children under the age of 15 years. Melanoma is particularly rare in prepubertal children before the age of 10 years. We present a case of a 9-year-old girl with a melanoma of the right foot. Her sentinel node biopsy was positive for isolated melanoma cells, and none of 5 additional lymph nodes removed following inguinal dissection were found to contain malignant melanoma cells. To our knowledge, this is the youngest melanoma patient recorded in the Greek population. The histological diagnosis of melanoma in this age group can be extremely difficult, and physicians ought to be cautious. The rarity of the disease results in small series of cases from which reliable figures are difficult to obtain. Unfortunately, this also applies to currently available treatments whose effectiveness is unclear.

Keywords

• adjuvant therapy
• childhood
• melanoma
• metastasis
• pediatric
• sentinel lymph node biopsy