Between 1985 and 1989, at the Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre (HCPA), 101 cases of cutaneous malignant melanoma (CMM) were reviewed in order to evaluate the status of the disease at diagnosis. The cases were obtained from the records of the pathology service of the HCPA. Nodular Melanoma (ND) was the most frequent type (36.6). In males, the predominant site was in the head, neck and trunk while in females it was in the lower limbs Clark level V was found in 35.6 of the cases. In 23.8, the tumor was larger than 4mm in depth according to Breslow classification. These results clearly demonstrate that the diagnosis of CMM is established in later stages of the disease.