Case Report
Rapidly enlarging mass following dental extraction
Sivakumar Palanivelu, P Jayanthi, Umadevi K Rao, Elizabeth Joshua, K Ranganathan
Published:
DOI:
10.4103/0973-029X.84510
License:
Copyright: © Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology2011This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Oral melanoma (OM) is a rare, malignant neoplasm of melanocytic origin. It accounts for 0.2 - 8% of all melanomas. In contrast to its cutaneous counterpart, OM has poor prognosis, possibly due to late clinical diagnosis, nonexistence of standardized clinical or histopathological grading and anatomical limitation in complete excision of the lesion. For better understanding of the lesion, case reports are still considered to be the source of information. Here we present a case of oral primary melanoma occurring in an uncommon site, the mandibular gingiva, with review of related literature.