Gong L, Li YH, Zhao JY, Wang XX, Zhu SJ, Zhang W. Primary malignant melanoma of the liver: A case report. World J Gastroenterol 2008; 14(31): 4968-4971 [PMID: 18756609 DOI: 10.3748/wjg.14.4968]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Wei Zhang, Professor, Department of Pathology, Tangdu Hospital, the Fourth Military Medical University, Xi’an 710038, Shaanxi Province, China. zhwlyh@fmmu.edu.cn
Article-Type of This Article
Case Report
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Li Gong, Jian-Ye Zhao, Shao-Jun Zhu, Wei Zhang, Department of Pathology, Tangdu Hospital, the Fourth Military Medical University, Xi’an 710038, Shaanxi Province, China
Yan-Hong Li, Department of Gynaecology and Obstetrics, Tangdu Hospital, the Fourth Military Medical University, Xi’an 710038, Shaanxi Province, China
Xu-Xia Wang, Department of Gastroenterology, Tangdu Hospital, the Fourth Military Medical University, Xi’an 710038, Shaanxi Province, China
Author contributions: Gong L and Li YH contributed equally to this work; Gong L, Zhao JY, and Zhang W performed the research; Gong L, Zhao JY, Zhu SJ, Wang XX, and Zhang W analyzed the data; Gong L and Li YH wrote the paper.
Correspondence to: Wei Zhang, Professor, Department of Pathology, Tangdu Hospital, the Fourth Military Medical University, Xi’an 710038, Shaanxi Province, China. zhwlyh@fmmu.edu.cn
Telephone: +86-29-847777467 Fax: +86-29-83552079
Received: May 18, 2008 Revised: July 14, 2008 Accepted: July 21, 2008 Published online: August 21, 2008
Abstract
Primary malignant melanoma of the liver is an exceedingly rare tumor. Only 12 cases have been reported in the worldwide literature. We present a case of isolated malignant melanoma of the liver occurring in a 36-year-old Chinese male patient. Comprehensive dermatologic and ophthalmologic examinations revealed no evidence of a cutaneous or ocular primary lesion. Other lesions in brain, respiratory tract, lung, gastrointestinal tract and anus, were not demonstrated by serial position emission tomography (PET). Microscopic examination of the resected specimen revealed a malignant melanoma, which was confirmed by immunohistochemical staining for HMB-45, S-100 protein, melanoma-pan and vimentin. Moreover, electron microscopy demonstrated melanosomes in tumor cell cytoplasm. Our case shows that primary malignant melanoma may occur in the liver and should be considered when the histopathological appearance is not typical for other hepatic neoplasm.
