COMPLETE Guide For Chemotherapy Effects and It's Treatment

Melanoma Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy in other words is an anti-cancer mode of treatment that helps to destroy the cancer cells or slow down the growth of cancer cells in the body. Systemic chemotherapy is a mode of cancer treatment where in the drug is injected into the vein or sometimes administered orally.

In case of melanoma the cancer spreads far beyond the layers of the skin and affects the lymph nodes as well as the other bodily organs. The chemotherapy drug is known to travel all through the body via blood stream and thus helps destroy the cancer cells in the body. There are various options to treat advanced melanoma, though chemotherapy has not proved to be very effective in treating melanoma. Drugs used here are either single or combination drugs.

The most commonly used drugs to treat melanoma are:

Drugs like Dacarbazine and CVD can be used as single drugs as well as combination drugs to treat melanoma. Drugs like cisplatin and carmustine are used with dacarbazine. Along with these tamoxifen is also used and this is referred to as Dartmouth regimen.

Cisplatin, dacarbazine and vinblastine are the combination drugs used along with CVD to treat melanoma. Dacarbazine can be obtained in a tablet form while a drug similar to this is known as temozolomide. This drug can be either taken with a combination of interferon or alone. The effects of combination drugs are known to give better results than the use of single drug.

Paclitaxel yet another chemotherapy drug used for treating melanoma and this drug too can be used alone or in combination with carboplatin or cisplatin.

Research has shown that sometimes single drugs have shown better results than combination drugs. However there are exceptions in every mode of chemotherapy treatment, the use of combining chemotherapy drugs is so called as they use a combination of two or more drugs in this mode of treatment which has shown better effectiveness as well as an increase in the chances of survival of the patient. The use of combining chemotherapy mode of treatment to treat various kinds of cancer is termed as chemo immunotherapy or biochemotherapy.

What is isolated limb perfusion chemotherapy?

Advanced melanoma when restricted to a certain area of the leg or the arms is called limb perfusion chemotherapy. Chemotherapy here is in the form of surgery where high doses of the chemotherapy drugs are injected right into the artery joining the limbs. But prior to undergoing this treatment the blood flow to the limb is temporarily cut off from the rest of the body and high dosage of chemotherapy drugs are injected into the arteries. Melphalan is the chemotherapy drug used to treat melanoma and the drug that is administered is warmed before it is injected into the arteries.

As in all cases of cancer treatment the drugs used to destroy the cancerous cells are also known to destroy or damage the normal or healthy cells that surround these cancerous cells. The side effects are almost similar to all the different modes of chemotherapy where in the patient complains of loss of hair, vomiting, nausea, fatigue, loss of memory, low resistance power to fight against diseases, drop in the blood count both the white blood cells as well as the red blood cells, mouth sores etc. These side effects are temporary and are known to disappear after the completion of the treatment, yet you need to consult your doctor before you go in for chemotherapy to treat cancer and know all about the side effects of these drugs.