Melanoma. Part I. Risk Assessment, Diagnosis, and Prognosis: Using Molecular Tools to Diagnose Melanoma, Predict Its Behavior, and Evaluate for Inheritable Forms

摘要: For the past 200 years, diagnosis of melanoma relied upon standard clinical and histologic criteria. Early with surgical intervention had been only chance for cure. Recent deciphering melanoma’s genetic underpinnings signaling pathways, however, has revolutionized complete management patient. Assessment patient risk is no longer limited to ultraviolet exposure but includes evaluation patient’s genome. Diagnosis microscopic inspection tumor, assessment tumor’s genome chromosomal abnormalities molecule mutations. Prognosis linked tumor size can be impacted by amplification oncogenes and/or molecular detection micrometastases. And, finally, treatment “excise pray” tactics tailored individual, reversing action very mutations that led melanomagenesis. With these new tools, it now clear not a single complex array tumors, each unique profile, similar in their genesis within host melanocyte. This chapter begins discussion on melanoma, exploring role diagnostics assessing (i.e., hereditary melanoma), diagnosis, prognosis, reclassification schemes, focus practical, or current, applications.