Breast metastases from cutaneous melanoma: a report of three cases

Abstract

In this report we describe three female patients with breast metastases from cutaneous melanoma (CM) who were treated in Slovenia in the period from 1988 to 1991. We found that in 476 Slovenian patents with this disease diagnosed in the given period CM disseminated to the breast less frequently than in other series. In one pregnant and one perimenopausal patient breast involvement by CM was confirmed at the time of widespread dissemination of the disease. Treatment was not effective and the survival of these patients was four months and two weeks and six months, respectively. A slightly better outcome was observed in a normally menstruating patient referred from another country with an isolated solitary breast metastasis from CM. In this patient quadrantectomy seemed to have been sufficient to achieve a disease-free interval of more than eight months. Special attention should therefore be given to a small subset of patients with isolated solitary breast metastases from CM, since their prognosis may be less dismal than in patients with massively infiltrated breasts and disseminated disease.