Dr. Riccardo Pampena

Dr. Riccardo Pampena
Skin Cancer Unit of the Arcispedale Santa Maria Nuova of Reggio Emilia, Italia

Nevus-associated melanoma: diagnosis and biological implications
Autor: Riccardo Pampena

Nevus-associated melanoma (NAM) is defined by the coexistence of melanoma and nevus components.
It accounts for almost one-third of melanoma cases and usually appears on the trunk of younger patients than the de-novo melanoma. Moreover, NAM patients frequently harbor high nevus count, light eye color and history of frequent sunburns.
Regarding prognosis, NAM is generally thinner and more frequently in-situ than de-novo melanoma.
NAM has been regarded as a model to investigate melanoma origin and two pathways have been proposed, the first not involving clinically visible precursors, the second involving melanocytic nevi as precursors.
Concerning diagnosis, dermoscopy may identify nevus and melanoma components when located side-by-side. However, static dermoscopy often fails in differentiating these entities, in particular when the two entities are superimposed.
Digital dermoscopic monitoring allows to identify dynamic changes occurring during follow-up; this may improve diagnostic accuracy and potentially our knowledge on NAM biology.

Scurt CV

Dr. Riccardo Pampena is a board-certified Dermatologist specialized in the diagnosis and treatment of skin cancers.
He obtained his degree in Surgery and Medicine (MD) from the Medicine University of the Sacred Heart of Rome in 2011 with full mark; then, he trained and became a board Certified Dermatologist (full mark) of the Department of Dermatology and Venereology of the Sapienza University of Rome, in 2016 defending a thesis on the role of Dermoscopy in predicting the efficacy of ingenol mebutate therapy for actinic keratosis.
Since 2011 he practices research mainly in the field of psoriasis and non-invasive diagnosis in dermato-oncology, paying particular attention to the study of melanoma and pigmented skin lesions by means of non-invasive methods, such as dermoscopy and confocal microscopy for the in vivo and ex vivo study of cytological and architectural aspects of pigmented skin lesions, in correlation with histopathology.
Since November 2016, Dr. Pampena has been working at the Skin Cancer Unit of the Arcispedale Santa Maria Nuova of Reggio Emilia, which is a third-level referral center for skin tumors diagnosis and management and recently became a Board Member of the International Dermoscopy Society. The collaboration of Dr. Pampena with the Skin Cancer Unit of Reggio Emilia started in January 2015 with a 2-month fellowship performed during his residency in Dermatology and Venereology.
Furthermore, he’s actively involved, as a researcher and statistician, in scientific studies. He also attended specific courses in Biostatistics and Cochrane Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis.