[Recent data on malignant melanoma of the upper respiratory and digestive tract mucosa. Apropos of a case].

The choice of a therapeutic strategy for the treatment of mucosal malignant melanomas from upper digestive and respiratory tracts remains difficult. This is due to the very low frequency of such malignancies and to the subsequent scarcity of data on parameters of diagnosis and prognosis. Such informations have been available on cutaneous malignant melanoma as they have been known for a longtime and occur with much higher frequency. Parameters of diagnosis and prognosis have been determined from randomised clinical traits. Based on such parameters a more efficient therapeutic strategy can be applied to the various clinical cases. In this paper we review these parameters and in particular those which seem to apply to the mucosal malignant melanomas from upper digestive and respiratory tracts. Finally we report on currently used therapeutic protocols and we present recent data from the literature on adoptive immunotherapy of malignant melanomas in mice.