A Case of a Malignant Melanoma with Late Metastases 16 Years After the Initial Surgery

Abstract

We report a case of a pulmonary metastasis 16 years after the initial surgery for a malignant melanoma. The patient was a 58-year-old Japanese man. In 1976, he had a pigmented skin lesion with a diameter of 8 mm on his right third finger. He received an amputation of the finger and a dissection of the right axillary. Histological examinations of the tumor revealed a feature of a malignant melanoma with infiltration of the papillary layers of the dermis, 1.5 mm in thickness. The histological subtype was considered to be an acral lentiginous melanoma with a mixed spindle-epithelioid cell pattern. There was no regional lymph node metastasis. In December 1992, when he was 74-years-old, a round tumor in the left lower lung was discovered by chest radiography. In February 1993, he received a left lower lobectomy of the lung. Histological examination revealed a feature of a malignant melanoma with predominantly epithelioid cells and this was considered to be a metastasis from the initial skin lesion. Five months after the lobectomy, he died from a hemorrhage of a metastatic brain tumor. This case indicated the importance of periodic, life-long follow-up in treating malignant melanomas.

The curious case of groin-swelling and a missing toe: A case report

“…Melanomas are highly malignant tumours and late detection usually is a poor prognostic factor. Literature shows cases of treated melanomas developing late metastasis/ late recurrence [6,7] . Though classically known to produce pigments, amelanotic melanomas are not uncommon.…”

Late pulmonary metastases from malignant melanoma of the left planta

“…We were able to fi nd only six cases, including ours, of resection of late pulmonary metastasis from a malignant melanoma (Table 1). [3][4][5][6][7] The DFI ranged from 10 to 27 years (median 17.5 years). All cases have one or two metastases.…”

Linac Radiosurgery for Brain Metastasis of Melanoma

“…The median survival time of patients treated with fractionated whole-brain radiotherapy also varied between 2 and 5 months [2, 5-9, 19, 20]. Surgical removal of solitary and occasionally multiple melanomas may be associated with enhanced survival time up to 7 months [21][22][23][24][25], and recent studies did not report longer median survival [20,26,27] even if some cases of long survivors have been reported [28,29]. Patients who had undergone surgical extirpation of the metastasis did not appear to survive longer, but were also in better neurological condition than patients who did not undergo surgery [30].…”