MELANOMA
Tree different types of malignant skin tumors exist: basocelular carcinoma (the most common type, it grows slowly and rarely spreads), planocelular carcinoma and melanoma. Today basocelular carcinoma and planocelular carcinoma have a high curability rate. Melanoma, malignant tumor of pigment skin cells, although the rarest from mentioned, is the leading death cause among skin diseases. It is unpredictable, can be quickly spread by blood or lymph to other organs.
Each year in the world 160 000 new melanoma cases are registered and approximately 48 000 people per year die from melanoma (SZO). Assumed risk of melanoma during the last century changed in the following way: year 1935 1:1500; year 1960 1:600; year 1985 1:150; year 2000 1:74. Melanoma shows epidemic growth of occurence for aproximately 3% of cases per year.
