Malignant melanoma of the nasal cavity

This paper gives a small sample of patients suffering from a rare disease which makes statistically significant conclusions impossible to draw. However, there are some observations that can be made. 1. The natural history of this disease appears to include early metastatic spread. However, regional lymph node metastases seem to be uncommon. 2. Surgery plays an essential role in treatment but used alone is possibly insufficient for the control of local disease as local recurrence is a major problem. 3. Post-operative radiotherapy improved local control and the time to recurrence was delayed. This meant an improved quality of life for some of our patients. 4. Metastatic bone disease treated for symptomatic relief showed radiotherapy and DTIC to be of value for pain relief and tumour regression. 5. As with other malignant melanomas, prognosis and treatment choice may be more accurately determined if the depth of invasion is known. This factor may well account for the varied disease-free survival intervals. 6. Mucosal malignant melanomas behave differently from cutaneous malignant melanomas.