The role of spectrophotometry in the diagnosis of melanoma.
BACKGROUND
Spectrophotometry (SPT) could represent a promising technique for the diagnosis of cutaneous melanoma (CM) at earlier stages of the disease. Starting from our experience, we further assessed the role of SPT in CM early detection.


METHODS
During a health campaign for malignant melanoma at National Cancer Institute of Naples, we identified a subset of 54 lesions to be addressed to surgical excision and histological examination. Before surgery, all patients were investigated by clinical and epiluminescence microscopy (ELM) screenings; selected lesions underwent spectrophotometer analysis. For SPT, we used a video spectrophotometer imaging system (Spectroshade MHT S.p.A., Verona, Italy).


RESULTS
Among the 54 patients harbouring cutaneous pigmented lesions, we performed comparison between results from the SPT screening and the histological diagnoses as well as evaluation of both sensitivity and specificity in detecting CM using either SPT or conventional approaches. For all pigmented lesions, agreement between histology and SPT classification was 57.4%. The sensitivity and specificity of SPT in detecting melanoma were 66.6% and 76.2%, respectively.


CONCLUSIONS
Although SPT is still considered as a valuable diagnostic tool for CM, its low accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity represent the main hamper for the introduction of such a methodology in clinical practice. Dermoscopy remains the best diagnostic tool for the preoperative diagnosis of pigmented skin lesions.
Ascierto
Paolo A
PA
National Cancer Institute, Naples, Italy. paolo.ascierto@gmail.com
Palla
Marco
M
Ayala
Fabrizio
F
De Michele
Ileana
I
Caracò
Corrado
C
Daponte
Antonio
A
Simeone
Ester
E
Mori
Stefano
S
Del Giudice
Maurizio
M
Satriano
Rocco A
RA
Vozza
Antonio
A
Palmieri
Giuseppe
G
Mozzillo
Nicola
N
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D046169:Dermoscopy; D042241:Early Diagnosis; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008545:Melanoma / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology; D008875:Middle Aged; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012307:Risk Factors; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012878:Skin Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology; D013053:Spectrophotometry / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards*; D055815:Young Adult