How long can you live after surgery for malignant melanoma

How long a patient with malignant melanoma can live depends on the specific type of tumor and the duration of treatment. If the patient discovers the disease early and actively undergoes surgical resection, the patient's five-year survival rate can be as high as 80%. However, if the patient finds that the disease is already in the middle or late stages and the tumor has metastasized to the lymph nodes or spread through the blood, even if surgical resection and radiotherapy and chemotherapy are performed, the patient's five-year survival rate is only about 30%. Therefore, this disease emphasizes early detection and early treatment.

If malignant melanoma has not metastasized in the early stage, surgical resection should be actively performed, mainly to remove the nodules or patches formed by the tumor. The scope of resection is not limited to the tumor, but also the normal tissue around the tumor needs to be removed in a three-centimeter section. Some patients may have malignant melanoma on their fingers, and at this time they may need to undergo finger amputation.

This disease sometimes affects the lymph nodes. In addition to tumor removal, lymph node removal is also required. However, lymph node removal is still controversial, so this surgery needs to be chosen with caution. In addition, some patients may have hematogenous metastasis. Such patients need to suppress pigment tumors through arterial injection of anti-mitotic drugs.

If the hematogenous metastasis of pigment tumor has developed to the late stage, it is necessary to use chlorpromazine combined with other tumor chemotherapy drugs for comprehensive chemotherapy, and radiotherapy can also be performed at the same time. In general, the treatment plan for this disease includes surgery, radiotherapy, and combined chemotherapy.

Note:

Now some comprehensive chemotherapy measures for melanocytoma are gradually entering the practical stage. The ten-year survival rate of patients after this chemotherapy can be as high as 62%, but this treatment method has not yet been widely used.