Malignant melanoma of the skin of the nose.

Seventeen patients with cutaneous melanomas of the nose were treated at the M. D. Anderson Hospital during the years 1944-1978. The local recurrence rate was 6 per cent. The two-year survival rate was 82 per cent; the five-year survival rate, 29 per cent; the ten-year survival rate, 12 per cent. Only 20 per cent of the patients developed histologically positive lymph nodes, and all died of the disease. Wide local excision with skin grafting is the treatment of choice, with a modified neck dissection and/or superficial parotidectomy reserved for subsequent nodal metastasis.