Once melanoma is diagnosed, your cancer care team will present the treatment options available to you. Your choice of treatment depends on the thickness of the tumor and the stage of the disease (whether and how much it has spread, or metastasized).

Working with you and your doctor, our team will design a treatment plan tailored to your specific needs.

Early-Stage Melanoma Treatment Options

Simple excision – Thin melanomas that are detected early can be completely cured by a relatively minor surgery called simple excision. The tumor is cut out (excised) along with a small amount of normal skin around the edges, referred to as the margin.

Wide excision – When a biopsy (a procedure in which a small amount of tissue is removed for testing) confirms a melanoma diagnosis, the biopsy site will need to be excised (cut) again. A wider area of skin will be cut away and examined to make sure that there are no cancer cells left in the skin. The size of the margin depends of the thickness of the tumor.

Mohs surgery – To help avoid disfigurement when the melanoma is on the face, the surgeon often will use Mohs surgery, a technique in which the melanoma is removed one thin layer at a time. Each “slice” is examined for cancer cells under a microscope until a layer shows no signs of cancer. This enables the surgeon to remove as much of the cancer as possible while conserving the surrounding skin.

Amputation – If the melanoma occurs on a finger or toe, treatment may require the finger or toe to be amputated.

Later-Stage Melanoma Treatment Options

Surgery – When melanoma has spread from the skin to the lymph nodes or distant organs such as the lungs or brain, surgery is unlikely to cure the cancer. When only one or two metastases are found, however, and can be completely removed, surgery may help some patients live longer or improve their quality of life.

Chemotherapy – Although chemotherapy is not as effective in melanoma as in some other types of cancer, it may relieve symptoms or extend the survival of some patients with late-stage melanoma.

Radiation therapy – Radiation therapy is not commonly used to treat the primary tumors of melanoma (the tumor that originally develops on the skin), but it may be considered in some patients and in patients whose melanoma has recurred (come back).

Immunotherapy – Immunotherapy helps a patient’s own immune system to recognize and destroy cancer cells more effectively. Several types of immunotherapy are used in treating melanoma. In some patients, this treatment has been shown to help shrink metastatic tumors or delay the recurrence of melanoma.

Gene therapy – Gene therapy is a promising new approach to treating melanoma by adding certain genes to the cancer cells. Several clinical trials to test gene therapy approaches are currently underway.