Skin melanoma patients with BRAF mutations tend to be more aggressive and have unfavorable survival rates than BRAF wild-type melanomas. We aimed to investigate to effects of age, gender, histopathology, and anatomical location of the lesion on BRAF mutation in Turkish cutaneous melanoma patients in this study. A total of 270 cutaneous melanoma patients with known BRAF mutation status were investigated retrospectively. BRAF mutation was observed in 141 (52.2%) patients and was slightly higher (52.5%) in males compared to females. The frequency of BRAF mutation decreased proportionally with aging — the highest rate in those younger than 35 years of age, the lowest rate in those older than 65 years — the location of the lesion away from the body — highest in the trunk, lowest in the fingers — and having less frequent histopathologies — most frequently in superficial-spreading pathology and lowest in acral lentiginous and lentigo maligna melanoma. In conclusion, we determined that the BRAF mutation frequency in Turkish melanoma patients is equivalent to the Western population average, and that varied significantly with age, histopathology, and location of the lesion.
