Precautions for melanoma treatment

Melanoma is extremely harmful, and the key to treating melanoma is early detection and early treatment. Clinical experts recommend that you pay attention to effective melanoma treatment measures and choose the most appropriate measures according to your specific condition. For diseases, the most important thing is timely diagnosis and treatment, which everyone needs to keep in mind.

Common treatments for melanoma

1. Biopsy surgery for the treatment of melanoma is mainly for patients suspected of malignant melanoma. The lesion should be removed together with the surrounding 0.5cm to 1cm normal skin and subcutaneous fat for pathological examination. If it is confirmed to be malignant melanoma, the depth of infiltration will determine whether additional extensive resection is needed. Generally, incisional or forceps biopsy is not performed unless the melanoma lesion has ulcerated or the lesion is too large and one resection will cause disfigurement or disability and must be confirmed by pathology first. However, the incisional biopsy must be connected with radical surgery as close as possible.

2. The scope of excision of the primary lesion is also a treatment rule for melanoma. The old view that 5 cm of normal skin must be included when excising the lesion has been abandoned. Most melanoma tumor surgeons only remove 1 cm of normal skin outside the tumor edge for thin lesions with a thickness of ≤1 mm, and perform wide excision 3 cm to 5 cm away from the tumor edge for lesions with a thickness of more than 1 mm. Malignant melanoma located at the extremities often requires finger (toe) amputation.

What should we pay attention to during the treatment process?

Radiotherapy is effective for the treatment of some very early freckle-type malignant melanomas, but generally has poor efficacy for other primary lesions. Therefore, radiotherapy is generally not used for primary lesions, but for metastatic lesions. There are not many ways to treat radiotherapy, but radiotherapy can be used to relieve symptoms in the case of metastasis.

Chemotherapy is not widely used in the treatment of melanoma. When surgery is not possible, chemotherapy will be used, mainly chemotherapy with a single chemotherapy drug and combination chemotherapy with multiple drugs.