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Cryosurgery is a well-tolerated therapeutic modality that offers an acceptable cure rate and good functional and cosmetic results in difficult to treat BCC.

In Latin American populations, acral lentiginous melanoma is the prevailing type of melanoma. Its relationship to preexistent benign volar melanocytic lesions has not been established; however, it is common practice to remove these lesions from children in spite of the fact that childhood acral lentiginous melanoma is extremely rare. To determine the frequency and the clinical and dermatoscopic characteristics of acrally located pigmented melanocytic lesions in schoolchildren of Manizales, Colombia, we undertook an exploratory, descriptive study of 1106 schoolchildren in search of pigmented volar and ungual lesions. In the study group there were 680 males and 426 females, ranging in age from 6 to 23 years (median age 13 years). At least one acral pigmented lesion was found in 464 individuals (42%). Their distribution over the volar surface was rather regular. Increasing age and darkness of the skin correlated with an increased number of lesions. Dermatoscopic patterns were consistent and suggestive of union nevus and simple lentigo as the predominant types of melanocytic proliferation. Typical pigmented melanocytic volar skin lesions are very common in our schoolchildren. Removal of these lesions is not routinely recommended since a relationship with acral lentiginous melanoma has not been established.

AbstracA methodology for segmentation and extraction morphologic feature from naildfold capillaroscopic images is presented. The main characteristc of the images studied here is the low contrast between the background and the capillaries.For this reason, three fundamental steps were applied in the preprocess: correction of the illumination, highlight and smoothing. For segmenting these images, Laplacians of the most contrasted component in each color space and the connectedness by threshold (region growth) were integrated. The extraction was carried out using image processing techniques such as principal components analysis (PCA), fractal geometry and tortuosity index (TI); their properties were proven. Tortuosity index is a clinical variable subjetive to the expert, it is presented as the ratio between the area and the fractal dimension (FD) of the capillary region. Other features obtained were width and height, density of capillaries, area and perimeter, orientation and polarity. The work was carried out on 300 capillaries obtained from images of subjects that do not suffer vascular diseases of the connective tissues and 250 capillaries of patients that have Lupus erythematosus (SLE). Images were taken from the third and fourth fingers of both subject's hands. The application of the automatic segmentation allowed the classification of the capillary tortuosity and the comparison to the manual segmentation which was made on 47 capillary images by an expert in dermatology..

Introducción. El melanoma maligno exhibe un comportamiento biológico agresivo, representa cerca del 4 % de las neoplasias cutáneas malignas, causa el 80 % de la mortalidad por cáncer de piel y su incidencia aumenta exponencialmente en el tiempo.Objetivo. Caracterizar el perfil epidemiológico, clínico e histológico de los pacientes con diagnóstico de melanoma maligno evaluados en la Clínica de Tumores de la Universidad de Caldas.Materiales y métodos. Se llevó a cabo un estudio retrospectivo y descriptivo. Se revisaron las historias clínicas de 492 pacientes que asistieron a la Clínica de Tumores, entre mayo de 2005 y octubre de 2015; se analizaron las siguientes variables: nombre, sexo, edad, tipo clínico, asociación con nevo melanocítico congénito, tiempo de evolución, índice de Breslow, nivel de Clark, localización, ulceración, metástasis, estadio y tratamiento.Resultados. Se analizaron 102 casos de melanoma maligno en 98 pacientes, el sexo femenino representó el 58,1 % y la sexta década fue la edad de presentación más común. El melanoma lentiginoso distal (acral) fue el tipo más frecuente (24,5 %), seguido del melanoma extensivo superficial (23,5%); en promedio, el tiempo de evolución fue de 29,6 meses. El 37,7 % de los casos tenían un índice de Breslow entre 0 y 1 mm, y el 37,2 %, un nivel IV de Clark. El 23,4 % se encontraban en estadio IV; la cirugía convencional fue el tratamiento más empleado.Conclusiones. Los estudios colombianos muestran resultados discrepantes de las características epidemiológicas encontradas en este trabajo, por lo tanto, se sugiere la realización de estudios similares con una muestra poblacional que incluya diferentes departamentos y permita establecer un perfil epidemiológico representativo del país.