Stereological estimates of nuclear volume in thin malignant melanomas

Stereological estimation of nuclear volume was performed in a case control study of 72 malignant melanomas, thickness < or = 0.8 mm and Clark's level II-III. However, stereological measurements could be performed in only 57 thin melanomas due to too sparse cellularity. Thus, 21 thin metastasizing melanomas were individually compared with 33 thin non-metastasizing melanomas after individual matching of cases with one or two randomly chosen controls for site of primary tumour, tumour thickness, level of invasion, tumour regression and follow-up. Conditional logistic regression analysis showed no significant differences in nuclear volume between metastasizing and non-metastasizing thin malignant melanomas.