Malignant Mucosal Melanoma of the Head and Neck Diagnosed in an Iranian Population over an 11-Year Period
Abstract
Problem statement: Mucosal Melanoma of the Head and Neck (MMHN) is a rare lethal disease. This malignancy accounts for half of all mucosal melanomas, occurring mainly in the nasal cavity, oral cavity and pharynx. They appear with equal gender distribution and with a peak incidence in the age range 60-80 years. The aim of this study was to investigate incidence, sex, age and site distribution of MMHN in the Kerman province during the time period from March 1991-2002. Approach: Documents and records of 52 patients with MMHN diagnosed from March 1991-2002 were reviewed. The patients were analyzed according to gender, age and location of the tumor. Data included in the present retrospective study were analyzed by SPSS13.5 statistical software, t-test and chi-square. Results: During this time period, 52 cases (25 men and 27 women) of MMHN were diagnosed. The age range was 7-84 years. The nasal cavity (55.8%) was the most affected site. The palate and upper gingiva was the most common site in the oral cavity (8 patients, 88.8%). Survivals 5 years in MMHN patients were 27% and patients with mucosal melanoma of oral cavity have an 11%, 5 year survival rate. Conclusion: Comparison between the findings of this study with the results obtained by other investigators showed a relative consistency.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3844/ajassp.2009.1467.1472
Copyright: © 2009 Maryam Assadat Hashemi Pour, M. Rad, M. R. Zarei and G. Chamani. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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Keywords
- Melanoma
- malignant
- head
- neck