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5 slides generated from the cancer page, with a quiz from the open benchmark and speaker notes that cite the sources. Arrow keys move between slides; Print gives one slide per page.
Melanoma of the urethra is a very rare urethral cancer that starts in pigment cells of the urethral lining, usually near its outer opening, in older adults. It is a form of mucosal melanoma, so it is removed surgically and, when it spreads, treated with the immunotherapy drugs used for melanoma elsewhere.
Primary melanoma of the urethra is a mucosal melanoma. In the series of 15 cases, the tumour involved the distal urethra in all six men and the distal urethra or meatus in eight of nine women; tumours were typically polypoid, 0.8 to 6 cm (mean 2.6 cm), every one had a vertical growth phase and the depth of invasion ranged from 2 to 17 mm (Oliva 2000). Among 11 women treated surgically at the Mayo Clinic over five decades (mean age 68), the study examined which tumour features predicted recurrence and disease-specific survival (DiMarco 2004). Men present with penile or urethral involvement and the outlook has classically been poor (Sanchez-Ortiz 2005).
How it differs from its parent: it is not a carcinoma at all, so none of the parent's bladder-cancer or anal-cancer analogies apply; staging and systemic therapy come from the mucosal melanoma page instead, and the WHO skin and genitourinary classifications treat mucosal melanoma as one entity across sites.
| Setting | Approach | Guideline |
|---|---|---|
| All stages | Excision as reported in the surgical series; recurrent or metastatic disease treated as mucosal melanoma with checkpoint inhibitors. | not mapped |