Current Management of Melanoma

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Abstract
EVEN THOUGH CARSWELL first used the term melanoma in a treatise in the early part of the 19th century, Hippocrates is credited with the first recorded clinical observation of cutaneous melanoma. During the seventeenth century several reports appeared in the literature referring to the “fatal black tumor.‘’ In 1806 both Laennec and Dupuytren published on melanosis; however, it was not until 1864 that Sir James Paget stated that cancer could develop in a mole. In 1892 Hutchinson published his Archives of Surgery in which he carefully described the senile freckle which we now call Hutchinson's melanotic freckle. A decade ago Clark2 formulated the classification utilized throughout the world today. He described three separate types: 1) melanoma, Hutchinson's melanotic freckle type (lentigo maligna melanoma), 2) melanoma, invasive with adjacent intraepidermal component of superficial spreading type (superficial spreading melanoma), 3) melanoma, invasive, without adjacent intraepidermal component (nodular melanoma).