A type of skin cancer, melanoma is diagnosed after the appearance of all sorts of dark spots on the epidermis. 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 consider these treatment variants carefully, without rushing into one of them. 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.
Among the treatments for melanoma there are options like surgery and chemotherapy. 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 doctors might consider re-excision, amputation or lymph node dissection. If melanoma has spread from the skin to distant organs, then surgery will not be a curable option to use. Therefore, melanoma chemotherapy could represent the most viable of possibilities. Systemic chemotherapy involved in such procedures normally relies on injectable anticancer drugs.
Drugs are either administered intravenously or orally. Melanoma chemotherapy drugs travel through the bloodstream to all parts of the body. They attack cancer cells which have already spread beyond the skin to lymph nodes or other organs. The same medication that kills the tumor will also damage some healthy tissues too. Among these normal cells that can be killed are blood-producing cells of the bone marrow, cells that line the gastrointestinal tract and cells of hair follicles. 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 combined with tamoxifen, which is a hormonal medication commonly used in treating breast cancer, are known as the Dartmouth Regimen. Then melanoma is also treated by a combination of vinblastine, cisplastin and DTIC. Temozolomide is a newer medicine, whose mode of function is similar to that of DTIC, except that it is used in the form of a pill.
Since melanoma chemotherapy drugs kill normal blood cells as well, anemia would be certainly diagnosed 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 infection risk (because the number of blood cells drops too).
