Case report                                                                                              

UDC: 616.5-006.81

UDC: 616.832-004.2     

doi:10.5633/amm.2012.0407

  

 

CUTANEOUS MELANOMA IN A PATIENT WITH MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS: CASE REPORT AND REVIEW OF LITERATURE

 

Asen Veličkov¹, Aleksandra Veličkov¹, Branka Djordjević¹, Jelena Radović¹ and Zoran Ćeranić²

 

 

                      University of Niš, Faculty of Medicine, Niš, Serbia¹

                      Department of Surgery, General Hospital Leskovac, Serbia²

 

Skin melanoma is a malignant tumour with aggressive behaviour. Regional or systemic metastases represent a form of spreading, however, the time of appearance should not be strictly defined. We present a case of the patient with skin melanoma, also suffering from multiple sclerosis, under a long-lasting high dose corticosteroid therapy. The primary tumour was 1.7 mm thick (T2a), but the clinical course was highly aggressive with massive subcutaneous and lymphatic metastases involving even the popliteal nodes. Several surgeries were performed as the only therapeutic choice, in circumstances in which interferon could not be applied because of multiple sclerosis. The patient died 16 months after establishing the diagnosis, in the stage of generalized disease. It should be debated that aggressive clinical course could  be associated with immunosupression, however, we still cannot draw definite conclusions. Acta Medica Medianae 2012;51(4):47-50.

 

      Key words: cutaneous melanoma, multiple sclerosis, rapid progression