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Melanoma:

What is the Melanoma Treatment?

Treatment of advanced malignant melanoma is performed from a multidisciplinary approach.Treatment is surgery to destroy or remove the entire skin growth, including a margin of cancer free tissue around the growth.

Although the incidence of melanoma is increasing by a whopping 3 to 5% per year in the United States, current therapies don’t significantly increase survival in most patients and no new first-line medicines have been approved in over 10 years.

Often this is done by a wide local excision with 1 to 2 cm margins. Melanoma in situ and lentigo malignas are treated with narrower surgical margins, usually 0.2 to 0.5 cm. Many surgeons consider 0.5 cm the standard of care for standard excision of melanoma in situ,

but 0.2 cm margin might be acceptable for margin controlled surgery. The wide excision aims to reduce the rate of tumour recurrence at the site of the original lesion. This is a common pattern of treatment failure in melanoma.

1.Cryosurgery

2.Mohs micrographic surgery

3.Curettage and electrosurgery

4.Complete excision

5.Adjuvant treatment

6.Chemotherapy and immunotherapy

7.Radiation and other therapies

They can occasionally show dramatic success, but the overall success in metastatic melanoma is quite limited. IL 2 is the first new therapy approved for the treatment of metastatic melanoma in 20 years.

Studies have demonstrated that IL 2 offers the possibility of a complete and long lasting remission in this disease, although only in a small percentage of patients. A number of new agents and novel approaches are under evaluation and show promise.

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