smouldering malignant melanoma and metastatic dormancy an update and review闷恶性黑色素瘤和转移性休眠更新和审查.pdf

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Dermatology Research and Practice Volume 2012, Article ID 461278, 6 pages doi:10.1155/2012/461278 Review Article Smouldering Malignant Melanoma and Metastatic Dormancy: An Update and Review ´ ´ ´ Gerald E. Pierard, Claudine Pierard-Franchimont, Marie-Annick Reginster, and Pascale Quatresooz Department of Dermatopathology, University Hospital of Liege, 4000 Liege, Belgium ` ` ´ ´ Correspondence should be addressed to Gerald E. Pierard, gerald.pierard@ulg.ac.be Received 8 February 2011; Accepted 19 August 2011 Academic Editor: Philippe Humbert ´ ´ Copyright © 2012 Gerald E. Pierard et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The fund of knowledge regarding the versatility of presentation of MM metastases is still quite incomplete. The recent literature pertaining to the current understanding of the mechanisms underlying two special features of MM metastasis is reviewed. On the one hand, a long disease-free interval (MM dormancy) may occur before the surge of overt metastases. On the other hand, the so-called MM smouldering phenomenon refers to the condition where regional metastases wax and wane for long periods of time on restricted skin regions. It is important to emphasize that local micrometastases often predict sentinel lymph node involvement but may not reflect progression of the primary MM to full-blown visceral m