Summary:
Malignant melanoma of the skin is the most frequent malignancy in humans
constituting only 1-4% of the malignant tumor, but it is responsible for 80% of
deaths from skin cancer with the effect of significantly increasing in recent
years despite all the efforts for presimptomatic screenings.
The white race is affected primarily and noted a slight predominance in
males. In this paper a detailed report on epidemiological studies in the first
part in order to highlight this increase in incidence of melanoma,
environmental and genetic factors have been implicated, as well as the
molecular biology of malignant melanoma.
The second part analyzes the clinical features, symptoms and different
clinical types, diagnosis, TNM staging and prognostic indicators based on the
staging. A detailed reference to the treatment of malignant melanoma by
analysis of surgical techniques tumor resection and restoration of tissue
defects in plastic surgery techniques, the theory and the sentinel node
discovery techniques using the lymphoscintigraphy and extensive reference to
the sentinel node biopsy, a process very important to the treatment plan.
Finally in the third part refers to the subsidiary-complementary therapies
for the treatment of metastases and residual disease with radiotherapy,
chemotherapy and immunotherapy and applications of each treatment alone or in
combination.
The third part and epilogue also contains the conclusions drawn from this
essay.
Keywords:
Melanoma, epidemiology of melanoma, Surgical treatment, Sentinel lymf node- SLN, Adjuvant therapy
