Melanoma is a common and serious type of cancer that’s often considered the worst type of skin cancer. The exact cause of melanoma is not fully known, but it is suspected that exposure to UV radiation from the sun plays a significant role. Melanoma happens when the melanin cells in your skin become cancerous. While melanoma is usually restricted to the skin, it can spread to your eyes, nose, throat, and other parts of the body.
While melanoma is the most serious form of skin cancer, it is usually treatable if you get an early diagnosis. There are several treatment options available for melanoma, and your exact treatment will depend on the stage of the cancer and how widespread it is.
Surgery is one of the most common treatment options for all stages of melanoma. The goal of surgery is to remove the mole, tumour, and skin cells that are cancerous. In the early stages of melanoma, surgery is very minimal. As melanoma has time to grow, however, surgery will get more invasive due to the size and extent of your cancer.
Whether you have surgery or not, your doctor will likely recommend chemotherapy as part of your treatment plan for melanoma. Chemotherapy is where toxic chemicals get sent into your body with the job of killing cancer cells. Chemotherapy is effective in all stages of cancer.
Radiation therapy is often used in conjunction with chemotherapy for melanoma treatment. Radiation therapy uses finely tuned bursts of radiation to target and kill cancer cells. It is often used as both a treatment and after treatment that has been successful in reducing the chances of your melanoma returning or spreading to other parts of the body.
When you have melanoma, your immune system gets compromised and is unable to fight cancer or guard against viruses, sickness, and infection. Therefore, a common treatment is to inject substances into your body that help boost your immune system. These substances will either provide a direct boost to your system or block crucial proteins and chemicals to make it difficult for cancer cells to replicate.
Targeted therapy is a more refined version of chemotherapy and radiation therapy. The job of chemo and radiation is to take on cancer cells as a whole and kill them. Targeted therapy, on the other hand, targets specific parts of cancer cells to break them down and kill them from the inside out.
Because of how specific targeted therapy is, it does not cause as many side effects as chemo and radiation. However, it also is not as potent, which means it may not be effective if the melanoma is widespread or advanced.
The unfortunate part of treating melanoma with the methods in this article is that most treatments hurt other parts of your body. While chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and radiation therapy are effective at killing cancer cells, they also damage other parts of your body, including cells and organs. This can result in unwanted symptoms such as nausea, stomach pain, hair loss, blood clots, blood loss, heart, kidney, and organ damage, lung failure, and much more.
Although surgery is the most effective treatment for melanoma, most people will require skin grafts to repair the damage caused by surgery.
While melanoma is often considered the most dangerous form of skin cancer, it is very treatable compared to other forms of cancer. However, it is essential that you receive an early diagnosis so that you can start treatment immediately. Once melanoma grows or spreads to other parts of the body, it is difficult to cure and will require more invasive treatments.