Amelanotic Acral Lentiginous Melanoma of the Heel: A Case Report of Misdiagnosis.

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Author Info

Mark E. Juhl Gaurav Agnihotri José M. Furlaneto Jr Maria M. Tsoukas

Corresponding Author

José M. Furlaneto Jr
Centro Universitário do Estado do Pará (CESUPA), School of Medicine, Av. Almirante Barroso 3775, 66613-903, Belém-PA, Brazil

A B S T R A C T

Acral lentiginous melanoma is an uncommon skin cancer that usually affects palms, soles, and nail apparatus of elderly Black and Asian individuals. Diagnosis is difficult, as it may mimic benign or traumatic lesions such as plantar warts or diabetic ulcers, especially if it is amelanotic. For this reason, detection is challenging, and proper diagnosis and treatment is often delayed, ultimately resulting in a poor prognosis. We report an 83-year-old Hispanic female with a two-year history of a painful, non-healing, glistening, exophytic mass on her left heel that was previously treated as a wart prior to proper biopsy and management. Patient education, complete physical exam and greater knowledge about this tumor, whether pigmented or not, are an important weapon to prevent its aggressiveness, increasing patients’ survival rate by decreasing the risk local invasion and metastasis. Biopsy should always be considered, especially in the setting of unresponsiveness to the treatment.

Article Info

Article Type

Case Report

Publication history

Received: Wed 15, May 2019
Accepted: Wed 19, Jun 2019
Published: Fri 30, Aug 2019

Copyright

© 2023 José M. Furlaneto Jr. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Hosting by Science Repository.
DOI: 10.31487/j.SCR.2019.03.11