ABSTRACT
Malignant transformation of a melanocytic nevus is a wellrecognized phenomenon. Some melanoma patients give a history of the presence of a pigmented lesion at the site of the tumor many years or even decades before it suddenly changed and the clinical features of melanoma became apparent. More definitively, remnants of benign melanocytic nevi can be recognized histologically within or immediately adjacent to some melanomas. Reported prevalence figures of such nevus remnants next to melanoma vary widely, from about 10 percent to over 80 percent.1-8 Variations in the study population and number of sections investigated, and especially differences in interpretation of small groups of melanocytes with less cytological atypia than the main population of melanoma cells, no doubt account for these differences.
