Thin melanoma subtyping fits well with the American Joint Committee on Cancer staging system.
It was considered a
thin melanoma, which meant the cancer had only gone down into the skin one millimetre.
"We are now awaiting publication of a larger analysis of patients with
thin melanoma," Dr.
Ambulatory narrow excision for
thin melanoma (< or = 2 mm): results of a prospective study.
Habermann, "The effect of the AJCC 7th edition change in T1 melanoma substaging on national utilization and outcomes of sentinel lymph node biopsy for
thin melanoma," Melanoma Research, vol.
"Sometimes, someone with a
thin melanoma lesion will have extensive disease on a PET scan, just as there are patients with a thick melanoma lesion who have ignored it, and they live long."
The finding that patients with histologic regression have half the risk for micrometastases in sentinel lymph node biopsy, compared with patients without regression gives a clear answer to the question of whether patients with
thin melanoma and regression should undergo SLNB, and that answer is "No."
Coleman III, "The prognostic importance of sentinel lymph node biopsy in
thin melanoma," Annals of Surgical Oncology, vol.
At present, the decision regarding whether to recommend SLNB in a patient with a
thin melanoma is based upon a general gestalt, said Dr.
Even though patients with early-stage disease (
thin melanoma, Breslow depth <1.0 mm) are thought to have an excellent clinical outcome (>85% survival during a 10-year period) (6) and can be treated effectively, 15% of melanoma deaths result from metastases of thin lesions.
However, in
thin melanomas, thickness does not necessarily discriminate between radial and vertical growth phase.
Finally, David Elder, MB, ChB, FRCPA, reviews the literature and work from his laboratory on prognostic modeling in
thin melanoma, which is defined as melanoma invasive to less than 1 mm according to Breslow.