An (un)lucky blow to the nail?

Development of a practical guide for the early recognition for malignant melanoma of the foot and nail unit

“…As a result, delayed presentation results in thicker, more advanced tumours [22][23][24]. Secondly, foot melanoma, possibly because of its rarity, is frequently misdiagnosed as a more common foot disorder such as tinea pedis [25][26][27][28][29], onychomycosis [30], warts [31][32][33][34][35][36], haematoma [25,[37][38][39], paronychia [40], ingrowing toe nail [41][42][43], bacterial infection [44], ischaemia or necrosis [14,40], blisters, ganglions, callus [42], benign tumours [45,46] and ulceration [47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54]. Misdiagnosis rate for foot lesions have been reported to be between 25%-66% [14,25,40] compared with much lower rates of around 12-16% for melanoma in other anatomical locations [27,55,56].…”

Letter: The most dangerous type of toe web ‘infection’

“…Sometimes a trauma calls attention to a lesion that have been passed unnoticed otherwise. Although trauma has been associated with acral melanoma (4) it usually represents a confounding factor, masking the pigmented lesion with focal haemorrhage in the skin. However this seems especially true for the great toe and not for the fourth as in our case.…”