Surgical removal (resection) is the standard treatment for melanoma. Both the tumor and also some healthy tissue around it are removed to decrease the chance that any cancer cells remain.
In cases in which the melanoma is very thin, enough tissue may be removed during the biopsy so that no further surgery is necessary. If the melanoma was not completely removed during the biopsy (local excision>/A>), the doctor will need to operate again to take out the remaining tumor and a narrow band of normal-looking tissue surrounding it.
For thick melanomas, it may be necessary to take out a larger margin of tissue. If a large area of tissue is removed, a skin graft may be done at the same time. For this procedure, the doctor uses skin from another part of the body to replace the skin that was removed.
The doctor may also take out nearby lymph nodes to determine whether the melanoma has spread (for example, as part of the lmyphatic mapping procedure, described above) or to treat melanoma that has spread to these lymph nodes (therapeutic lymph node dissection, described above).
If there is evidence that melanoma has spread from the skin to distant organs (such as the lungs or brain), doctors generally believe that the cancer cannot be cured by surgery. However, physicians may use surgery as a treatment that is limited in extent (loco-regional) or distant spread of melanoma if the distant spread is causing or may cause local symptoms. If the cancer has spread to the brain, surgery may be used if the doctor thinks the tumor can be removed, in order to relieve symptoms related to local tumor growth.
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