OBJECTIVETo summarize the clinical characteristics and treatment of patients with malignant nasal mucosa melanoma, and explore the factors influencing the prognosis of malignant nasal mucosa melanoma.

METHODSTo retrospectively analyze the clinical data of 29 patients with malignant nasal mucosa melanoma in Tianjin Huanhu hospital, department of otorhinolaryngology head and neck surgery between October, 1999 and June, 2013. Eighteen of them were male, other eleven were female, the median age was 61.5 years. The patients were staged according to the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) staging system, eight cases were in T1, ten cases were in T2, six cases were in T3, five cases were in T4. Among the 29 cases, twenty-two patients received surgical treatment, twenty-eight patients accepted radiotherapy, seventeen patients had the chemotherapy. The Kaplan-Meier method was used to analyze the prognosis impacts of gender, age, disease location, clinical staging, treatment, and histopathological features and so on.

RESULTSIn this series, the overall 3 year survival rate was 48.3% and 5 year survival rate was 27.6%. There were 4 factors effecting the 5 year survival rate : the location of tumor, T stage, surgical treatment and black pigmentation (P value was 0.008, 0.012, 0.021 and 0.027). But, gender, age, chemotherapy and other factors had no effect on overall survival rate.

CONCLUSIONSAJCC staging system can effectively predict the prognosis of patients. The prognosis of patients with pathogenic site in nasal septum is better than the others. The surgical treatment is the preferred method of treatment. Histological features such as tumor melanin pigmentation affect the prognosis of the patients.