The presentation and outcomes of mucosal melanoma in 695 patients

Abstract

Based on this large review of patients with sinonasal mucosal melanoma, adjuvant radiation therapy may not provide a survival benefit as patients tended to do poorly regardless of adjuvant radiation status.

Reply to mucosal melanoma: clinical and genetic profile

“…In fact, head and neck melanoma are not rarer than the other subtypes of mucosal melanoma as showed by large studies that mainly focused on this subtype of melanoma. 4 The lower prevalence of sinonasal melanoma in our population could partially explain some phenotypic and genetic differences with the series of Solovan et al 1 Amelanotic aspect was found in 17% melanomas of our study, whereas in 42.5% of those of Solovan et al; c-kit mutations were never found in our genital melanomas, differently from the study of Solovan that identified 18% of c-kit mutated genital melanomas. Concerning the ethnic differences with the study of Altieri et al 5 mentioned by Solovan, we did not record if patients were Hispanic in our study because it is not a French and Italian medical practice to identify patients by their Hispanic origin.…”

“…As dermoscopy improves the diagnostic accuracy of clinical examination, it is necessary to ameliorate this technique in order to overcome the obstacles related to the anatomy of the oral cavity and ensure an examination of its inner part, such as recently suggested by D. Jakhar, MD, and C. Grover, MD. 4 Some measures in this sense could also simplify the application of new technologies, such as reflectance confocal microscopy (RCM), that was recently used in association with a novel intraoral telescopic probe in a patient with previous multiple melanomas to study a pigmented oral lesion. The results obtained with RCM have indeed suggested that it could be useful to discern between melanotic macules and mucosal melanomas or to target biopsies in case of suspicious oral lesions.…”

Adjuvant radiotherapy in sinonasal mucosal melanoma: A retrospective analysis

“…Perhaps, primary sinus tumours present with more advanced disease at diagnosis, which hampers radical resection. Similar to several other studies, we defined positive margin status as a negative predictor. This emphasises the importance of reliable margin assessment.…”

“…has been reached regarding the use of adjuvant radiotherapy: while some studies reported better local control 3,[5][6][7][8] and sometimes even better OS, 4 other studies did not find any difference. 1,9 The same problem applies for prognostic factors for recurrence and survival: the predictors reported in the literature, such as age, 10 distant metastasis 5,6 and tumour subsite, 5,6,11 remain too heterogeneous to develop a valid prognostic model.…”

Comparing Kadish, TNM, and the modified Dulguerov staging systems for esthesioneuroblastoma

“…Jethanamest et al examined staging and treatment data for ENB using the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program. Konuthula et al, on the other hand, examined the prognostic utility of the Kadish staging system using the National Cancer Database (NCDB). To date, no study has performed comparisons between staging systems.…”