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Open AccessJournal ArticleDOI

Thickness, cross-sectional areas and depth of invasion in the prognosis of cutaneous melanoma.

Alexander Breslow
- 01 Nov 1970 - 
- Vol. 172, Iss: 5, pp 902-908
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TLDR
The depth of invasion was studied using the criteria for staging of Clark et al.2 to see if maximal cross-sectional area, thickness, stage of invasion, or a combination of these can be of value in assessing the prognosis of cutaneous melanoma.
Abstract
CuTANEous melanoma is a most unpredictable lesion. The marked variation in prognosis is probably a function of many variables, one of which is the size of the tumor. Though there is a roughly inverse relationship between the diameter of the lesion and survival,5 very small lesions have recurred or metastasized. One possible reason for the lack of reliability of tumor size in estimating prognosis may be that studies to date have considered size in only two diamensions and have neglected tumor volume. Two melanomas can have the same diameter but differ greatly in thickness because of variation in either depth of invasion or degree of protrusion from the surface of the skin or both. A recent study 2 has shown that prognosis correlates well with staging of the depth of invasion, but there have been no studies relating survival to tumor volume. To measure tumor volume it is necessary to know the surface area of the tumor, but in this retrospective study we only know the maximal diameters of the lesions. By measuring the maximal thickness of the lesions we can calculate the maximal crosssectional area, which should be roughly proportional to the volume of the tumor. The depth of invasion was also studied using the criteria for staging of Clark et al.2 to see if maximal cross-sectional area, thickness, stage of invasion, or a combination of these can be of value in assessing the prognosis of cutaneous melanoma. A total of 98 lesions were so studied.

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Citations
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Immunomagnetic detection and clinical significance of micrometastatic tumor cells in malignant melanoma patients

TL;DR: The results demonstrate the prognostic significance of detecting BM micrometastasis in melanoma patients and strengthen the validity of the immunobead technique.
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Characterization of selected strongly and weakly invasive sublines of a primary human melanoma cell line and isolation of subtractive cDNA clones

TL;DR: It is illustrated that stable genetic alterations lead to heterogeneous subpopulations within primary melanomas which differ in their ability to invade basement membranes and interact with components of the extracellular matrix.
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Isolation and characterization of mouse MUC18 cDNA gene, and correlation of MUC18 expression in mouse melanoma cell lines with metastatic ability.

TL;DR: The levels of muMUC18 mRNA and protein in nine mouse melanoma cell lines were directly proportional to their ability to establish metastatic colonies in lungs of syngeneic mice, suggesting that the muM UC18 cDNA sequence determined in this report is correct.
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Automated detection of malignant features in confocal microscopy on superficial spreading melanoma versus nevi

TL;DR: Quantitative endpoint metrics for malignant characteristics make digital RCM data an attractive diagnostic asset for pathologists, augmenting studies thus far, which have relied largely on visual assessment.
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Metastatic malignant melanoma of the oral cavity. A retrospective study.

TL;DR: Patients with melanoma treated at the National Institutes of Health between 1953 and 1989 had cutaneous primary tumors predominantly of the trunk and head and neck region that commonly presented as moles that were enlarging, bleeding, or showing both of these signs.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

Some Methods for Strengthening the Common χ 2 Tests

TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss two kinds of failure to make the best use of x2 tests which I have observed from time to time in reading reports of biological research, and propose a number of methods for strengthening or supplementing the most common uses of the ordinary x2 test.
Journal Article

The Histogenesis and Biologic Behavior of Primary Human Malignant Melanomas of the Skin

TL;DR: Evidence is presented suggesting that superficial spreading melanoma and lentigo maligna melanoma (Hutchinson9s melanotic freckle) show a long period of superficial growth, followed by the relatively rapid appearance of nodules or deeper invasion within the primary lesion.
Journal ArticleDOI

The Detection of Partial Association, I: The 2 × 2 Case

TL;DR: In this article, a criterion for testing null hypotheses of conditional independence of two dichotomous random variables is derived for testing whether the association of the two random variables in the conditional distribution is, in a certain sense, constant.
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