Erkennungshäufigkeit und Zeitraster bei der Erkennung von Melanomen durch den Patienten selbst und was bedeutet das für den Chirurgen?

Patients play an important role in the detection of their own primary tumor. But how quickly this tumor develops, over how many weeks and months is hardly known, as there is little data available. We have conducted a retrospective survey on N = 127 melanoma patients that underwent sentinel node surgery in our department and asked them whether they noticed a changing skin lesion at the site of the melanoma and if, over which period did they observed the change within the lesion. One forth of the patients did not perceive any lesion at all. The other three quarters noticed the lesion and reported a change, which i…