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Researchers are continually finding new treatment methods for melanoma. The choices that you have for treatment depend upon these factors.
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It helps to learn all you can about the cancer and your treatment choices. It helps you take an active part in decisions about your medical care. Discuss these choices with your doctor, other healthcare professionals, and loved ones. Your doctor and nurses are the best people to answer your questions about treatment. Make sure you ask how the treatment will change your daily life, including your diet, and how you will look and feel after treatment. Ask how successful the treatment is expected to be, and what the risks and possible side effects are.
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Surgery is the most common treatment for melanoma. Its goal is to remove the cancer and perhaps normal skin around it to reduce the chance of spread. If you have cancer that has spread, your doctor may suggest surgery to remove distant tumors. Doctors do this to relieve symptoms. It will not likely cure the disease.
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Surgery is a common treatment for all stages of melanoma. A slightly different type of surgery is used for each stage.
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Any of these specialists may do surgery to remove melanoma. Dermatologist General surgeon
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It will most likely take a couple of weeks for your incision to heal. During this time, you may experience these things. They are in order of most to least common, but can vary from person to person.
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Although melanoma is the rarest form of skin cancer, it is becoming more and more common. According to the American Academy of Dermatology, 1 in 62 Americans today have a lifetime risk of developing invasive melanoma. That is a 2000% increase from 1930.
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Immunotherapy is a form of biological therapy. It uses substances to activate your own immune system. Sometimes these substances are called biologicals. Then, your immune cells better recognize and attack the cancer cells. Doctors use more than one type of substance to treat melanoma.
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Your doctor may suggest immunotherapy if one of these cases applies to you. You have advanced melanoma. In this case, the goal of immunotherapy is to help shrink the tumor. You may have this treatment along with chemotherapy. Or your doctor may suggest a clinical trial of immunotherapy to help you.
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Immunotherapy gets your immune system to more effectively attack cancer cells. These are the 2 main types of immunotherapy used to treat advanced melanoma, which means it has spread.
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Side effects can be severe, but usually improve after the treatment is finished.
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The goal of radiation treatment is to kill cancer cells and shrink tumors with high-energy X-rays. It may also relieve symptoms and prevent a recurrence.
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Your doctor may suggest radiation therapy for these reasons. The melanoma could not be removed completely by surgery.
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Radiation treatments are not painful. You will most likely have the treatment as an outpatient. That means you may have it at a hospital or a clinic, but you don't generally have to stay the night. You may also have it as an inpatient.
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Radiation therapy affects normal cells as well as cancer cells. The side effects of radiation depend on the amount and the type of radiation you get.
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Chemotherapy is the use of drugs to kill cancer cells. Usually, chemotherapy is systemic, meaning the drugs go through your whole body, killing cells that rapidly divide. The benefit of this is that it can kill cells that have spread from the original tumor. The downside is that it kills all cells that divide rapidly, even healthy ones, and that can lead to side effects. With melanoma, you may get systemic chemotherapy. Or you may get treatments that limit the effects to specific areas. In that case, it's called regional chemotherapy.
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The advantage of chemotherapy is that it is systemic, meaning it travels throughout your body. It can reach cancer cells that have spread beyond the tumor. Chemotherapy may be a good option if one of these statements is true.
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Most people with melanoma have chemotherapy in an outpatient part of the hospital, at the doctor's office, or at home. You might go to a special chemotherapy-only clinic. Depending upon which drugs you receive and your general health, you might stay in the hospital during treatment. You can take chemotherapy in pill form, by injection, or in more than one way. For melanoma, intravenous (IV) injection is most common.
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Side effects of chemotherapy depend upon the type and amount of drugs you're taking. They vary from person to person. This list of side effects starts with the most common and ends with the least common for most people. But effects can be different for each person.
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The incidence of cutaneous melanoma--the most serious form of skin cancer--is rising faster than any other cancer in the United States .
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