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Treatments and drugs
By Mayo Clinic staffThe best treatment for you depends on your stage of cancer and your age, overall health and personal preferences.
Treating early-stage melanomas
Treatment for early-stage melanomas usually includes surgery to remove the melanoma. A very thin melanoma may have been entirely removed during the biopsy and require no further treatment. Otherwise, your surgeon will remove the cancer as well as a small border of normal skin and a layer of tissue beneath the skin. For people with early-stage melanomas, this may be the only treatment needed.
Treating melanomas that have spread beyond the skin
If melanoma has spread beyond the skin, treatment options may include:
- Surgery to remove affected lymph nodes. If melanoma has spread to nearby lymph nodes, your surgeon may remove the affected nodes. Additional treatments before or after surgery may also be recommended.
- Chemotherapy. Chemotherapy uses drugs to destroy cancer cells. Chemotherapy can be administered intravenously, in pill form or both, so that it travels throughout your body. Or chemotherapy can be administered in a vein in your arm and leg in a procedure called isolated limb perfusion. During this procedure, blood in your arm or leg isn't allowed to travel to other areas of your body for a short time, so that the chemotherapy drugs travel directly to the area around the melanoma and don't affect other parts of your body.
- Radiation therapy. This treatment uses high-powered energy beams, such as X-rays, to kill cancer cells. It's sometimes used to help relieve symptoms of melanoma that has spread to another organ. Fatigue is a common side effect of radiation therapy, but your energy usually returns once the treatment is complete.
- Biological therapy (immunotherapy). Biological therapy boosts your immune system to help your body fight cancer. These treatments are made of substances produced by the body or similar substances produced in a laboratory. Biological therapies used to treat melanoma include interferon and interleukin-2. Side effects of these treatments are similar to those of the flu, including chills, fatigue, fever, headache and muscle aches. Ipilimumab (Yervoy) is an immunotherapy drug approved for treatment of advanced melanoma that has spread.
Experimental melanoma treatments
Clinical trials are studies of new treatments for melanoma. Doctors use clinical trails to determine whether a treatment is safe and effective. People who enroll in clinical trials have a chance to try evolving therapies, but a cure isn't guaranteed. And sometimes the potential side effects aren't known.
Some melanoma treatments being studied in clinical trials include:
- Combining chemotherapy and biological therapy. Combining chemotherapy and biological therapy drugs may increase the success of both of these treatments. However, combining treatments can make severe side effects more likely.
- Targeted therapy. Targeted therapies interrupt a specific process in cancer cells in order to control cancer. For instance, targeted drugs designed to stop melanoma from attracting blood vessels have been tested. Melanoma needs blood vessels to deliver nutrients and it uses blood vessels to spread cancer cells throughout the body. A drug that stops this process could cause a melanoma to remain small and localized. In another approach, specific chemicals that stimulate cancer cells to grow rapidly could be inactivated.
- Vaccine treatment. Vaccines for treating cancer are different from vaccines used to prevent diseases. Vaccine treatment for melanoma might involve injecting altered cancer cells into the body to draw the attention of the immune system.
- What you need to know about melanoma. National Cancer Institute. http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/wyntk/melanoma/allpages. Accessed April 19, 2010.
- Lange JR, et al. Melanoma. In: Abeloff MD, et al. Abeloff's Clinical Oncology. 4th ed. Philadelphia, Pa.: Churchill Livingstone; 2008:1229.
- Melanoma: What it looks like. SkinCancerNet. http://www.skincarephysicians.com/skincancernet/melanoma.html. Accessed April 24, 2010.
- Albreski D, et al. Melanoma of the feet: Misdiagnosed and misunderstood. Clinics in Dermatology. 2009;27:556.
- Hussein MR. Extracutaneous malignant melanomas. Cancer Investigation. 2008;26:516.
- Elder DE. Dysplastic naevi: An update. Histopathology. 2010;56:112.
- Smith RA, et al. Cancer screening in the United States, 2009: A review of current American Cancer Society guidelines and issues in cancer screening. CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. 2009;59:27.
- Skin examinations. SkinCancerNet. http://www.skincarephysicians.com/skincancernet/skin_examinations.html. Accessed April 24, 2010.
- Can melanoma be found early? American Cancer Society. http://www.cancer.org/docroot/CRI/content/CRI_2_4_3X_Can_melanoma_be_found_early_50.asp?sitearea=. Accessed April 24, 2010.
- Skin cancer screening. National Cancer Institute. http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/screening/skin/healthprofessional/allpages. Accessed April 19, 2010.
- U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. Screening for skin cancer: U.S. Preventive Services Task Force Recommendation statement. Annals of Internal Medicine. 2009;150:188.
- Melanoma. Fort Washington, Pa.: National Comprehensive Cancer Network. http://www.nccn.org/professionals/physician_gls/PDF/melanoma.pdf. Accessed April 19, 2010.
- Melanoma treatment. National Cancer Institute. http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/treatment/melanoma/healthprofessional/allpages. Accessed April 19, 2010.
- Lazovich D, et al. Indoor tanning and risk of melanoma: A case-control study in a highly exposed population. Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. 2010;19(6):1557. http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/early/2010/05/21/1055-9965.EPI-09-1249.full.pdf. Accessed May 27, 2010.
- Yervoy (prescribing information). Princeton, N.J.: Bristol-Myers Squibb; 2011. http://packageinserts.bms.com/pi/pi_yervoy.pdf. Accessed Dec. 19, 2011.
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