BACKGROUND The incidence of cutaneous melanoma is increasing worldwide. Since it is an aggressive neoplasm, it is difficult to treat in advanced stages; early diagnosis is important to heal the patient. Melanocytic nevi are benign pigmented skin lesions while atypical nevi are associated with the risk of developing melanoma because they have a different histological pattern than common nevi. Th...

A multistep genetic model of tumorigenesis, based on genetic alterations in benign and primary malignant lesions, has been proposed for neoplasms such as colonic carcinoma. However, evidence for a similar genetic progression in melanoma has relied heavily on findings in cultured lesions or metastases. We have investigated every autosomal arm for loss of heterozygosity in 41 primary cutaneous me...

Melanoma comprises a wide range of cytological and architectural features histopathologically and hence can mimic many benign and malignant lesions of epithelial, mesenchymal and hematopoietic cell lines of differentiation. Therefore, analysis and close clinical, histological, histochemical and immunohistochemical correlation is vital in distinguishing challenging melanoma cases from their mimi...

The Spitz nevus was first described as the “melanoma of childhood” or “juvenile melanoma” by Sophie Spitz in 1948 (1). Most spitzoid melanocytic proliferations can be classified as benign Spitz nevi or spitzoid melanomas based on published criteria (2-3). However, a subset of spitzoid lesions have histological features that deviate from a typical Spitz nevus, yet are insufficient for a definiti...

Recently image analysis (IA) and DNA-cytophotometry (CP) have proved to be useful for the differentiation between benign and malignant melanocytic lesions on paraffin sections. Since, on sections, these procedures are very time-consuming, we tested in the present study whether IA of imprint specimens, which can be evaluated in less than 30 minutes, might also be sufficient. In 39 malignant mela...

A number of pigmented lesions are diYcult to classify and raise the possibility of a melanoma diagnosis. Care should be exercised to exclude non-melanocytic lesions, and benign melanocytic entities, both of which can mimic melanoma histologically. In addition, the possibility of the lesion being a melanoma variant or epidermotropic metastasis should be considered. There will still be some cases...

AIM To compare the sensitivity and staining pattern of the new immunohistochemical antibody to tyrosinase (T311) with S-100, HMB45, and the recently evaluated antibody to melan-A (A103) in a range of melanocytic lesions. METHOD Archival, formalin fixed, paraffin wax embedded sections from 50 benign and malignant melanocytic lesions were stained immunohistochemically with anti-tyrosinase, A103...

Melanocytic lesions on the genital area are rare and poorly documented; they occur more frequently on the vulva and less often on the perineum, pubic area, and male genitalia. Genital melanocytic nevi exhibit features similar to nevi occurring on other areas of the body; in addition, they display high clinical and histopathological variability and are mostly classified as common nevi. However, ...