Melanoma Chemotherapy

A type of skin cancer, melanoma is diagnosed after the appearance of all sorts of dark spots on the epidermis. These skin surface formations do not represent the only symptoms of the disease, more conclusive tests are performed before passing the initial cancer diagnosis and establishing a potential treatment. Melanoma chemotherapy represents a first option to fight skin cancer. Anyway, patients should analyze all treatment variants carefully, without rushing into one of them. First of all, patients ought to understand everything about the treatments. It is obvious that the choice of the procedure depends on the thickness of the primary tumor and the stage of the disease mainly.

Surgery and melanoma chemotherapy represent the main alternatives here. The diversity of choices increases when it comes to determining the most advantageous form of surgery for the evolution and the location of the melanoma. Thus there are lymph node dissection, re-excision and amputation to decide on. Unfortunately, if besides melanoma, the cancer has spread to organs as well, surgery will not be the solution. Therefore, melanoma chemotherapy might be the solution. Systemic chemotherapy involved in such procedures normally uses injectable anticancer drugs.

Drugs are either administered intravenously or orally. Melanoma chemotherapy drugs get carried to all the body parts by blood. They attack cancer cells which have already spread beyond the skin to lymph nodes or other organs. The drugs kill cancer cells but, unfortunately they also destroy some normal cells as well. The blood producing cells in the bone marrow, the hair follicles and the cells in the gastrointestinal tract represent the first collateral victims of the chemical cancer bombarding. Consequently, all sorts of side effects will become manifest from mouth sores, nausea and vomiting to hair loss, anemia and many others.

Among the melanoma chemotherapy drugs we ought to mention temozolomide, cisplastin, DTIC, tamoxifen, vinblastine and BCNU. DTIC can be used alone or with other chemotherapy drugs like BCNU and cisplatin. DTIC, BCNU and cisplatin in combination with tamoxifen, which is a hormonal medication commonly used breast cancer treatment, bear the name Dartmouth Regimen. Then melanoma is also treated by a combination of vinblastine, cisplastin and DTIC. To give one other melanoma chemotherapy drug example, we ought to refer to temozolomide, a modern medication administered orally.

Since melanoma chemotherapy drugs kill normal blood cells as well, patients might experience low blood cell counts and this can lead to bleeding or bruising after even minor cuts or injuries, fatigue (experienced because of the anemia and the medical treatment in itself) and an increased chance of infection (because of white blood cell shortage).

Filed Under: Chemotherapy