Abstract
The patient was a 59-year-old woman. Biopsy following discovery of blood in the stool revealed a melanoma in the anorectal area. Abdominoperineal resection was subsequently performed. The patient has survived for 10 years with no recurrence. The tumor was 4 cm in diameter with a tumor depth of pm. There was no metastasis to the lymph nodes. Histological analysis showed the growth to be an amelanotic melanoma. Including our patient, only 9 patients surviving more than 5 years have been reported in Japan. The 5-year survival rate for patients with abdominoperineal resection is fairly low (18.7%), and no patients are reported to have survived more than 5 years when excision was localized. We compared patients who survived more than 5 years with those who died within 2 years, and found that the conditions for longer survival were: 1) tumor diameter of less than 5 cm, 2) tumor depth of pm or less, 3) abdominoperineal resection with wide-ranging lymphadenectomy performed regardless of whether metastasis to lymph nodes had occurred.
