Services Offered

Doctors at the University of Chicago aim to treat melanoma aggressively while still minimizing the impact of treatment, such as scarring, on a patient's healthy skin.

The Critical Role of Surgery

Surgery plays a major role in melanoma treatment. It may involve removing the cancerous area and a small amount of normal tissue to help prevent the cancer from recurring.

More advanced surgery may help some people with melanoma. These options include:

• Sentinel lymph node biopsy, which doctors can use to identify and remove lymph nodes where cancer has spread. During this procedure, a surgeon injects a radioactive substance at the site of the melanoma to determine if lymph nodes are involved and if they need to be removed. Patients who have a sentinel lymph node biopsy instead of a standard lymph node dissection (in which all of the lymph nodes of an area are removed) experience less pain and fewer complications.
• Isolated limb perfusion, a highly specialized surgery during which the blood flow to an arm or leg is “shut off” from the rest of the body. This allows doctors to deliver chemotherapy to the area for a brief period of time at very high doses without harming tissues in other parts of the body.

Other Therapies for Melanoma

Many patients with early stage melanoma may only need surgery. But others with more advanced disease may require surgery plus other therapies:

Radiation

Radiation therapy is sometimes used in the treatment of melanoma to control symptoms in an involved area or to treat tumors that have spread to the brain.

Chemotherapy

The latest chemotherapy medicines for melanoma are available from medical oncologists at the University of Chicago.

In addition, doctors at the University of Chicago Hospitals are currently studying a number of other treatments for this disease. These include novel melanoma vaccines, gene therapy approaches, and new drugs that act on specific molecular targets. Another strategy is combining chemotherapy drugs with substances that boost the body's disease-fighting immune system.

Preventing Future Cancers

Detecting the subtle changes in skin that occur before cancer is another priority for our doctors. Through “mole mapping,” doctors can use digital photography to track a patient's skin changes over time.

This can help prevent skin cancer or uncover very early stage cancer, which has the highest cure rate.

More Information

• Services Offered