External ear melanoma

Cutaneous melanomas are the tumours that have increased more their incidence in the last fifty years. Melanomas arising from the external auditory canal are extraordinariously unfrequent. These tumours show an aggressive and silent behaviour, and due to this the diagnosis is frequently made in an advanced stage. A male with a malignant melanoma arising from his left external auditory canal was attended in our department, suspecting an epidermoid carcinoma. The clinical findings and the extension of the lesion required a lateral temporal bone resection, parotidectomy and neck dissection to achieve a total resection. We present a review of the literature about this entity and an analysis of the incidence, significance of the lymph node metastases and value of the elective neck dissection.