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Background: There are limited data regarding the difference in progression pattern between acral melanoma and nonacral melanoma.Aims: The objectives of this study were to compare the progression pattern between acral and nonacral melanoma and evaluate its impact on clinical outcomes.Methods: Clinical and histopathological features, survival outcomes and prognostic factors of 492 patients with acral melanoma or nonacral melanoma were retrospectively evaluated using the Asan Medical Center database.Results: The male-to-female ratio and the mean age was 1:0.92 and 60.2 years for acral melanoma (n = 249), and 1:0.85 and 58.4 years for nonacral melanoma (n = 243), respectively. The demographic difference was not significant. Although prediagnosis duration was longer and the advanced stage was more common in acral melanoma than that in nonacral melanoma, the vertical growth phase was more common in nonacral melanoma than that in acral melanoma, whereas, the horizontal diameter is longer in acral melanoma than that in nonacral melanoma. Dissemination to lymph nodes was more common in acral melanoma than that in nonacral melanoma. Lymph node involvement was associated with deeper Breslow thickness in nonacral melanoma but not in acral melanoma. The degree of correlation of prediagnosis duration with horizontal diameter was remarkable in acral melanoma, but with Breslow thickness in nonacral melanoma. Overall survival was worse in acral melanoma than that in nonacral melanoma. The prognostic value of Breslow thickness was more remarkable in nonacral melanoma than that in acral melanoma.Limitations: This study is a retrospective, single-center design.Conclusion: Acral melanoma has a longer radial growth phase compared with nonacral melanoma. However, acral melanoma is commonly associated with lymph node dissemination which contributed to worse survival in acral melanoma than nonacral melanoma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Kaposi sarcoma (KS) is a mesenchymal tumor with distinct histopathological features according to stage of progression. Programmed death‐1 (PD‐1) and its ligand PD‐L1 play major roles in the immune escape strategy of tumors. Objectives: This study evaluated expression of PD‐1 and PD‐L1 in various stages of KS and investigated associations between their expression and clinical characteristics. Methods: Fifty cases with histopathologically diagnosed KS were classified as early or late stage. These specimens were stained with anti‐PD‐1 and anti‐PD‐L1 antibodies. The extent of expression in the intratumoral and peritumoral areas was judged by two dermatopathologists. Results: PD‐1 and PD‐L1 were expressed in 72.2% (13/18) and 11.1% (2/18) of early‐stage cases, respectively, compared with 43.8% (14/32) and 28.1% (9/32) of late‐stage cases, respectively. At the late stage, PD‐1 expression was significantly higher in the peritumoral area than in the intratumoral area (P = 0.001). PD‐1 expression in the intratumoral area was significantly higher at the early stage than at the late stage (P = 0.013). PD‐L1 expression in the peritumoral area was significantly higher at the late stage than at the early stage (P = 0.038). Conclusions: The pattern of PD‐1 and PD‐L1 expression differs according to the stage of KS, but is unaffected by clinical variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A total of 272 070 patients with internal malignancies were identified; 401 patients with cutaneous metastasis were included. However, in the current study, only 0.15% of patients developed skin metastases, which may reflect that regular health checks are common in Korea and that only patients who underwent skin biopsy were included. Lesions were identified in more than one location in 63 patients; 39.0% of cutaneous metastases were located in the chest, and the majority were metastases from breast cancers (84.4% of chest lesions). GRAPH: Table S1 Underlying primary cancers in patients with cutaneous metastases according to anatomical locationTable S2 Mean time to metastasis according to sex and primary cancer. [Extracted from the article]

A 12-year-old girl who had a history of liver transplantation due to congenital biliary atresia, presented with a 6-month history of an enlarging erythematous plaque with crust on her right buttock. A diagnosis of EBV-positive cutaneous PTLD of T-cell lineage was made. This case suggests that B-cell and T-cell PTLD, both associated with EBV infection, can co-occur in a liver transplant recipient. [Extracted from the article]

The radial artery pulse is one of the major diagnostic indices used clinically in both Eastern and Western medicine. One of the prominent methods for measuring the radial artery pulse is the piezoresistive sensor array. Independence among channels and an appropriate sensor arrangement are important for effectively assessing the spatial-temporal information of the pulse. This study developed a circular-type seven-channel piezoresistive sensor array using face-down bonding (FDB) as one of the sensor combination methods. The three-layered housing structure that included independent pressure sensor units using the FDB method not only enabled elimination of the crosstalk among channels, but also allowed various array patterns to be created for effective pulse measurement. The sensors were arranged in a circular-type arrangement such that they could estimate the direction of the radial artery and precisely measure the pulse wave. The performance of the fabricated sensor array was validated by evaluating the sensor sensitivity per channel, and the possibility of estimating the blood vessel direction was demonstrated through a radial artery pulse simulator. We expect the proposed sensor to allow accurate extraction of the pulse indices for pulse diagnosis.