Familial Melanoma in Italy: A Review

Looking back to history, the first accredited description of melanoma appeared in the writings of Hippocrates (5th century, BC) as a “fatal black disease”; over the centuries, several other physicians have described pigmented malignant skin lesions, but only during the 1800s significant gains were obtained in the comprehension and treatment of melanoma. In 1820 William Norris suggested for the first time a genetic basis for the disease, reporting the development of a skin neoplasm in a father and his son, and in 1838 Carswell used the medical term “melanoma” to describe pigmented lesions. Cutaneous melanoma represents a malignant skin cancer, which arises from the neoplastic transformation of specialized pigment-producing cells, the melanocytes. Its aggressive features, in terms of tendency to develop metastasis and strong resistance to therapy, make melanoma one of the deadliest forms of cancer.