Objective: The purpose of this article is to report our experience with neurotropic melanoma, a rare malignancy that sometimes produces neurologic symptoms because of a direct extension of the primary tumor.
Methods: We report 3 consecutive patients with neurotropic melanoma of the head and neck who presented with clinical perineural invasion.
Results: Two patients had incompletely resectable tumors and were treated with definitive radiotherapy (RT), and 1 patient received surgery and postoperative RT. One patient experienced recurrence in a regional lymph node 30 months after RT and underwent salvage surgery; he is disease-free at 45 months after initial treatment. The remaining 2 patients are disease-free 34 months and 14 months after treatment.
Conclusions: Radiotherapy alone or combined with surgery may provide relatively long-term local control in patients who have neurotropic melanoma with clinical perineural invasion.