Fujisawa Y, et al. - Researchers used the database of Japanese Melanoma Study Group of the Japanese Skin Cancer Society, to examine the clinical features of 4594 Japanese patients with melanoma as well as to determine the prognostic factors. Using Kaplan-Meier method and Cox proportional hazards model, they determined disease-specific survival in patients with invasive melanoma in relation to clinical and histological parameters. Acral lentiginous melanoma (40.4%) was the most common clinical type, followed by superficial spreading melanoma (20.5%), nodular melanoma (10.0%), mucosal melanoma (9.5%), and lentigo maligna melanoma (8.1%). Compared to Caucasians, a similar trend was noted in the 5-year disease-specific survival of each stage. Findings revealed no link between clinical classification and survival in any stages, but acral type was related to poor survival in stage IIIA. The aggressiveness of acral type in certain populations might be suggested by the findings.