Melanoma is a type of cancer that affects the skin and is recognized by the dark spots that appear on the dermis. 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 represents a first option to fight skin cancer. Anyway, patients should analyze all 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. There are different choices in as far as surgery is concerned, depending on where and how advanced the melanoma is. Thus there are lymph node dissection, re-excision and amputation to decide on. 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 uses injectable anticancer drugs.

These are usually injected into a vein or taken orally. Melanoma chemotherapy drugs get carried to all the body parts by blood. 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. The blood producing cells in the bone marrow, the hair follicles and the cells in the gastrointestinal tract represent the first collateral victims of the chemical cancer bombarding. Consequently, all sorts of side effects will become manifest from mouth sores, nausea and vomiting to hair loss, anemia and many others.

Among the melanoma chemotherapy drugs we ought to mention temozolomide, cisplastin, DTIC, tamoxifen, vinblastine and BCNU. Combinations between these various medications are possible and often recommended. DTIC, BCNU and cisplatin in combination with tamoxifen, which is a hormonal medication commonly used breast cancer treatment, are known as the Dartmouth Regimen. Then melanoma is also treated by a combination of vinblastine, cisplastin and DTIC. To give one other melanoma chemotherapy drug example, we ought to refer to temozolomide, a modern medication administered orally.

Since melanoma chemotherapy drugs have a damaging impact on normal blood cells as well, anemia would be certainly diagnosed and this can reduce the blood clotting speed for instance, 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 tool).

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