Balloon Cell Urethral Melanoma: Differential Diagnosis and Management

Table 1

Balloon cell melanoma literature review with focus on treatment/outcome.

Author	Year	Article type	Number of patients	Treatment	Outcome	Comments
Bal et al. [9]	2013	Case report	1 (anal, primary)	Standard	<20% 5-year survival
Richardson et al. [14]	2012	Case report	1 (brain, secondary)	Chemo and surgery provide best outlook
Lee et al. [12]	2011	Case report/lit. review	1	Standard		Prognosis of BCMM does not depend on the degree of balloon cell change, tumor size, nuclear atypia, or mitotic activity
Kao et al. [11]	1992	Cohort study	34	Standard	57.5% died at 2–12 years from metastasis. 18.2% developed local recurrences: 15.2% alive with metastatic tumours 21.2% alive without evidence of disease	Prognosis of BCMM usually correlates with the tumour thickness
Peters and Su [15]	1985	Case report/lit. review	1	Standard		Many balloon cell melanomas show only mild cellular atypia and minimal mitotic figures although the tumour has a malignant course.
Fievez [16]	1984	Lit. review	Unknown	Unknown	6.3-year median survival
Jakobiec et al. [13]	1979	Case series	2 (ciliary body)	Unknown		Abundant number of balloon cells probably comparatively dormant and benign tumours