Clinical appearance and treatment of malignant melanoma of the skin.

A report is presented on cases of malignant melanoma of the skin recorded in the Finnish Cancer Registry between 1963 and 1968. The material consisted of 693 cases where the diagnosis of melanoma was confirmed by reclassification of the histological specimens and/or by careful perusal of the hospital records. In females melanoma was most frequent on the lower extremities (43%). One half of the tumours of males were located on the trunk and two thirds of these where on the posterior side of the trunk. Most of the tumours were in stage I at the time of diagnosis (males 75%, females 80%). The mean duration of symptoms, was 4.0 months in males and 4.2 months in females. In stage I, the duration of symptoms was under four months in 40% of cases and in stage II in 37% of cases, whereas in stage III this figure was 68%. The most common symptoms were increase in size (46%) and bleeding from the tumour (11%). Only 28 patients were treated radically while "wide" excision was the most common surgical method (48%).