Melanoma Chemotherapy

Melanoma is a type of cancer that affects the skin and is recognized by the dark spots that appear on the dermis. In order to treat melanoma, diagnostic tests must first be completed and then the cancer team will be able to recommend one or maybe more treatment options. Melanoma chemotherapy is one of the possibilities here. Anyway, patients should analyze all treatment variants extensively by learning all the can on the implications. Proper information on the alternative treatments is the first step. The procedure will normally be established depending on the disease evolution and the thickness of the primary tumor.

Surgery and melanoma chemotherapy represent the main alternatives here. There are different choices in as far as surgery is concerned, depending on where and how advanced the melanoma is. Thus doctors might consider re-excision, amputation or lymph node dissection. Unfortunately, if besides melanoma, the cancer has spread to organs as well, surgery will not be the solution. Therefore, melanoma chemotherapy could represent the most viable of possibilities. Systemic chemotherapy that the procedure involves uses injectable anticancer drugs.

Drugs are either administered intravenously or orally. Melanoma chemotherapy drugs get carried to all the body parts by blood. The direct impact of the active substances will be on the cancer cells affecting skin, organs and lymph nodes. The same medication that kills the tumor will also damage some healthy tissues too. 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.

Melanoma chemotherapy drugs include temozolomide, cisplatin, vinblastine, DTIC, BCNU and tamoxifen. Combinations between these various medications are possible and often recommended. DTIC, BCNU and cisplatin in combination with tamoxifen, which is a hormonal medication commonly used in treating breast cancer, are known as the Dartmouth Regimen. Then there is another combination of DTIC, cisplatin and vinblastine to use against melanoma. To give one other melanoma chemotherapy drug example, we ought to refer to temozolomide, a modern medication administered orally.

Since melanoma chemotherapy drugs have a damaging impact on normal blood cells as well, patients might experience low blood cell counts and this can reduce the blood clotting speed for instance, excessive tiredness (experienced because of the anemia and the medical treatment in itself) and an increased chance of infection (because the number of blood cells drops too).

Filed Under: Chemotherapy