Abstract
The term “primary dermal melanoma” has been used to describe a solitary melanoma lesion confined to the dermal and/or subcutaneous tissue in primary unknown melanoma cases. There are no significant histopathological differences between primary dermal melanoma and cutaneous metastasis of melanoma. The most important distinction to be made is with metastatic melanoma, because the prognoses for stage IV melanoma and primary dermal melanoma are vastly different. In some reports, the five-year survival rate was reported to be over 80%. We report 2 cases of primary dermal melanoma. Both cases, at first, were diagnosed as cutaneous metastasis of melanoma histopathologically. However we could not detect any primary lesion. One case is disease-free over 4 years after the operation. The other case only recently underwent surgery, so it is too early to be definitely diagnosed as primary dermal melanoma.
