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Melanoma is a type of cancer that affects the skin and is recognized by the dark spots that appear on the dermis. These skin surface formations do not represent the only symptoms of the disease, more conclusive tests are performed before passing the initial cancer diagnosis and establishing a potential treatment. Melanoma chemotherapy represents a first option to fight skin cancer. Anyway, patients should consider these treatment variants carefully, without rushing into one of them. First of all, patients ought to understand everything about the treatments. 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 that the procedure involves uses injectable anticancer drugs.

Drugs are either administered intravenously or 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 drugs kill cancer cells but, unfortunately they also destroy some normal cells as well. 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. As a result, patients will go through temporary side effects like nausea and vomiting, mouth sores, loss of appetite and loss of hair.

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 combined with tamoxifen, which is a hormonal therapy drug 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 kill normal blood cells as well, patients might experience low blood cell counts and this can lead to bleeding or bruising after even minor cuts or injuries, excessive tiredness (experienced because of the anemia and the medical treatment in itself) and an increased chance of infection (because of white blood cell shortage).

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