Your treatment options depend on the stage of your melanoma and your overall health. During its early stages, melanoma can be successfully treated with surgery alone. Other types of cancer treatment are effective for more advanced stages of melanoma.
For most patients, regardless of stage, surgery is the first treatment they will undergo. In fact, for patients with early-stage disease (stage 0 – 2), surgery may be the only treatment your melanoma requires!
Immunotherapy is a cancer treatment that stimulates the immune system to fight cancer anywhere in the body. This treatment may either be systemic, meaning that the drugs travel through the bloodstream, or local, injected into or near an accessible tumor.
Targeted therapy is cancer treatment that focuses on specific molecules within cancer cells. The drugs work by blocking the function of abnormal molecules to slow the growth and spread of cancer, such as melanoma.
Chemotherapy uses drugs to kill or slow down the growth of cancer cells. Chemotherapies are no longer often used to treat cutaneous melanoma due to the recent advances in immunotherapy and targeted therapies, but they are utilized in some cases where melanoma is resistant to these newer approaches.
Adjuvant therapy is additional treatment given after the primary treatment for melanoma (usually surgery) to reduce the risk of the cancer returning.
Cellular Therapy, also called Cell-based therapy, is a type of medical treatment that involves the use of living cells to treat or prevent diseases. It is a rapidly evolving field in medicine that holds great promise for various conditions, including the treatment of melanoma and other cancers.
Before you start to make treatment decisions, you should get up to speed on all of your options — including clinical trials. This is particularly important for patients with advanced stages of melanoma.
