Malignant Melanoma Wheeless

Description: Prognosis: - prognosis of malignant melanoma worsens w/ increasing tumor thickness and also appears to be related to tumor site, age, and sex; - lesions on the scalp, hands, and feet, particularly in older pts and males, all have a poorer prognosis; - tumor thickness & 5 year survival rate: - tumor thickness <0.75 mm have> 95% survival rate; - tumor thickness> 4 mm have <50% surviva ratel; - w/ nodal metastasis five-year survival rate declines to 36%; - w/ metastases survival is <5 %; - lymph nodes and lymphatic mapping: - useful for identifying metastasis to the sentinel lymph node; - observation that the classic lymph node dissection would not necessarily identify metastasis to the SLN (which was the case in 10/12 patients in the study by Joseph et al 1999; - in contrast, patients w/ a negative SLN can be spared the morbidity of a complete lymph node dissection