Open Access
Issue
J Oral Med Oral Surg
Volume 28, Number 1, 2022
Article Number 13
Number of page(s) 1
DOI https://doi.org/10.1051/mbcb/2022003
Published online 07 March 2022

A 43-year-old female patient reported with the chief complaint of a black colored swelling on the palate for the past one month. The swelling was insidious in occurrence, gradually increased in size since onset, no associated pain, discharge, trauma or constitutional symptoms. On examination, a brownish-black exophytic growth with areas of depigmentation measuring about 3.2 × 2 × 1.5 cm was seen involving the hard palate and maxillary alveolus in the region of 27 and 28 (Fig. 1). It was firm in consistency, non-tender and did not blanch on diascopy. A diagnosis of malignant melanoma was made which was confirmed through histopathology.

thumbnail Fig. 1

Clinical picture depicting the brown-black exophytic growth.

Oral malignant melanomas are rare but aggressive and potentially lethal tumors. Symptoms occur later in the course of disease when the damage is irreparable. Therefore, it is important for oral physicians to be aware about such entities so that misdiagnosis is prevented and early intervention can save a life.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Informed consent

Informed consent has been obtained from the patient.

Ethical committee approval

Not required.

Source of funding

No funding received.


© The authors, 2022

Licence Creative CommonsThis is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

All Figures

thumbnail Fig. 1

Clinical picture depicting the brown-black exophytic growth.

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