Morphological analysis of malignant melanoma cases with prolonged survival

Retrospective morphological analysis of 145 malignant melanoma cases was carried out to prove the prognostical importance of some morphological characteristics of the tumor. The cases were divided into two groups according to the survival time. The majority of the tumors with long survival time showed little capacity of invasion, while those with short survival time invaded at deeper levels of the dermis. Other features seemed to be of no prognostical relevance. Difficulties in determining the depth of invasion exactly were also discussed.