What is a "superficial spreading malignant melanoma"?

What is a "superficial spreading malignant melanoma"?

Harry Saperstein, MD, FAAD (Dermatologist, Clinical Assoc. Professor, Medicine, Private Practice and UCLA) gives expert video advice on: What is a "lentigo maligna melanoma"?; What is an "acral lentiginous melanoma"?; What is "nodular melanoma"? and more...

The most common type of malignant melanoma, which occurs in seventy percent of all malignant melanomas, is the superficial spreading malignant melanoma. That malignant melanoma, fortunately, has a very long, horizontal growth phase. The horizontal growth phase is where the cells, the atypical cells, grow in the epidermis and make the malignant melanoma broader or wider. Under those circumstances, when that lesion can be found, it is a hundred percent curable by removing the melanoma. After some time however, that horizontal growth phase stops or is replaced by a vertical growth phase, whereby the cells start growing into the dermis. The more invasive those cells are into the dermis, the more likely those cells have an opportunity to have access to the blood vessels and the lymphatics and to spread to other organs in the body. That can be a fatal event.