A Case Report of Prolonged Survival of Anorectal Melanoma

Haruhisa Hara, Michio Asano, Syuzi Asai, Yoshizi Kato, Syohachiro Furukawa, Hisami Ando¹⁾

Department of Surgery, Kyoritsu General Hospital
Department of Surgery, Nagoya University School of Medicine, Branch Hospital¹⁾

The patient was a 59-year-old woman. Biopsy following discovery of blood in the stool revealed a melanoma in the anorectal area. Abdominoperineal resection was subsequently performed. The patient has survived for 10 years with no recurrence. The tumor was 4 cm in diameter with a tumor depth of pm. There was no metastasis to the lymph nodes. Histological analysis showed the growth to be an amelanotic melanoma. Including our patient, only 9 patients surviving more than 5 years have been reported in Japan. The 5-year survival rate for patients with abdominoperineal resection is fairly low (18.7%), and no patients are reported to have survived more than 5 years when excision was localized. We compared patients who survived more than 5 years with those who died within 2 years, and found that the conditions for longer survival were: 1) tumor diameter of less than 5 cm, 2) tumor depth of pm or less, 3) abdominoperineal resection with wide-ranging lymphadenectomy performed regardless of whether metastasis to lymph nodes had occurred.

Key words
anorectal malignant melanoma, abdominoperineal resection, long survival case of anorectal malignant melanoma

Reprint requests
Haruhisa Hara Department of Surgery, Kyoritsu General Hospital
3-18-5 Roukuban, Atsuta-ku, Nagoya, 456 JAPAN

Accepted
March 11, 1992

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