Malignant melanoma in children and adolescents

✍ Scribed by Charles B. Pratt; Michael K. Palmer; Nicholas Thatcher; Derek Crowther

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1981
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 456 KB
• Volume: 47
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0008-543X
• DOI: 10.1002/1097-0142(19810115)47:2<392::aid-cncr2820470229>3.0.co;2-j

✦ Synopsis

Thirty-one children and adolescents with malignant melanoma were treated at the Christie Hospital and Holt Radium Institute between 1945 and 1977. Locations of primary lesions included head-neck 14, trunk nine, and extremity eight. Twenty-five patients had clinically localized tumor at diagnosis, four had regional disease, and two had generalized tumor. Surgery was the primary modality of therapy. Fifteen patients survive without active disease from two years to more than 18 years, and 16 patients died of disease.

Cancer 47:392-397, 1981. XPERIENCE with occurrence of malignant mela-E noma in children has been documented only in scattered reports of single patients or included in articles dealing primarily with the adult experience.1-7v9*10~14*22 The purpose of this report is to present data on this unusual tumor in children, based on the Christie Hospital and Holt Radium Institute experience with 31 patients under the age of 21 years and admitted between 1945 and 1977.