Background: The prognosis of mucosal melanoma is poor, and the difference in clinical prognosis between patients with and without pigment needs further study.Aim: To analyze data with head and neck mucosal melanoma, and compare the prognosis of patients with and without pigment.Material and methods: The patients of amelanotic melanoma were matched with pigmented type according to age, sex, stage, location of disease, treatment history, tobacco and alcohol history. The Kaplan-Meier and Cox proportional risk regression model was used for analyzation.Results: 46 patients of amelanotic melanoma and 46 of pigmented type were included in this study. The overall survival rate and progression-free survival rate of patients with pigmented melanoma were higher than in patients with amelanotic melanoma (HR = 0.533, p = .035, 95% CI = 0.296-0.957; HR = 0.530, p = .034, 95% CI = 0.294-0.953, respectively), and the risk of distant metastases in patients with amelanotic melanoma was significantly higher than that in patients with pigmented melanoma (HR = 0.474, p = .046, 95% CI = 0.228-0.987).Conclusions and significance: The prognosis and disease-free survival of amelanotic melanoma is worse than for the pigmented type group. More identifying the differences in clinical characteristics will help to further individualized treatment decisions.
Keywords: Head and neck mucosal melanoma; amelanotic melanoma; pigmented type.