ABSTRACT
When a diagnosis of melanoma is made, the pathologist is required to provide additional information regarding the patient’s prognosis. Prognostic factors constitute a central issue in melanoma research; the number of articles retrieved from the National Library of Medicine database on melanoma prognosis totals well over 7000. The subject is complex indeed; from a practical point of view, the numbers of prognostic factors that have been put forward regarding melanoma are far too large to be handled. An exhaustive discussion of the subject is beyond the scope of this book, which aims to provide guidance to the diagnostic pathologist in routine practice. Accordingly, we limit ourselves to those prognostic factors that should be investigated in each instance, as part of the routine pathological investigation. An individualized risk score for melanoma, based on a limited set of clinical data and histopathological primary tumor parameters, devised by Cochran et al., allows a very good estimate of an individual patient’s prognosis.1 Various prognostic factors that currently generate much interest but do not have immediate consequences in terms of planning of further clinical management, will be dealt with as well.
