Surviving John

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 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. 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 that the procedure involves relies on injectable anticancer drugs.

These are usually injected into a vein or taken 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 drugs kill cancer cells but, unfortunately they also destroy some normal cells as well. 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. As a result, patients will go through temporary side effects like nausea and vomiting, mouth sores, loss of appetite and loss of hair.

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 there is another combination of DTIC, cisplatin and vinblastine to use against melanoma. 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, patients might experience low blood cell counts and this can lead to bleeding or bruising after even minor cuts or injuries, fatigue (frequently because of low red blood cell counts but also because of chemotherapy itself) and an increased chance of infection (because the number of blood cells drops too).

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