Malignant melanoma; an anatomopathologic study during an eight year period

Abstract

There has been a worldwide increase in the incidence of malignant melanoma over the last decades. The importance of its early diagnosis and the close relationship with environmental factors has been the fundamental reason that motivated this work which is aimed at determining the incidence of malignant melanoma in our environment identifying its distribution according to age and gender, the main anatomical location and the most common histological variants. A total amount of 40 964 biopsy requests were reviewed in this descriptive retrospective study. A sample of 69 cases was chosen –taking into account the presence of cutaneous malignant melanoma. A statistical analysis was carried out and the following variables were operationalized: age, gender, location of the malignant tumor, histological variant and prognostic index. The main results were an increase in the diagnosis of malignant melanoma; most of the cases were in the fifth decade of life; the lower limbs were the most common anatomical location; the predominant histological variant was the superficial extensive one, Clark 's levels I and II and Breslow's group one.

Keywords

• melanoma/diagnóstico
• epidemiología descriptiva