Also in 1997, Wu and Lambert, in an article titled, "Melanoma in children and adolescents,"⁶⁷ addressed the subject of melanoma in 13 patients younger than 20 years, 11 of whom had primary cutaneous melanoma and two of whom had leptomeningeal melanoma. In three children the melanoma was positioned in a large congenital nevus; in eight the melanoma was said to be associated with another kind of nevus. Of these eight children, five were more than 10 years of age. Of the three children younger than 10 years of age was an 8-year-old boy who had on the left cheek a melanoma that metastasized to cervical and hilar lymph nodes and to lungs. He died nine months after diagnosis of the primary neoplasm had been made. The other two children, a 2-year-old girl with a melanoma on the plantar surface of the right great toe and a 7-year-old boy with a melanoma on the left temple were reportedly alive without evidence of metastatic disease 137 and 192 months, respectively, following diagnosis of the primary neoplasm. By dint of their experience with these patients, Wu and Lambert came to the conclusions:

Milton and coworkers, also in 1997,⁶⁸ recorded their experience with cutaneous melanoma in 32 patients who were less than 13 years of age. They did that in an article titled, "Malignant melanoma—cutaneous melanoma in childhood: Incidence and prognosis." The patients were drawn from two large referral centers for melanoma in Australia between January 1950 and September 1996. None of the melanomas were situated in a giant congenital nevus or associated with either xeroderma pigmentosa or immunodeficiency. Seven of 15 children died of the effects of metastases of melanoma. The authors had this to say about these children, one of them in particular:

By 'disease-free,' Milton and colleagues intended to convey "seemingly disease-free;" in fact, this child lived for 12 years with metastases that had been disseminated prior to the excision of the primary melanoma in the skin.