The kind of treatment and approach your doctor recommends for you will depend on your current stage and location of melanoma and also along with the consideration of your overall health condition. This article lists the guidelines usually considered for treating preliminary stages of melanoma.

Treating at the earliest stage melanoma (Stage 0)

If one looks at photos of skin cancer, one will observe at this stage that the melanomas won’t have grown deeper than just the topmost layer of skin (epidermis). Most commonly they are treated by wide excision surgery for removing the melanoma along with a small margin of the normal skin that sounds it.

Imiquimod cream (Zyclara) is suggested by some doctors or radiation therapy as an alternative to surgery.

Treating at the first stage of melanoma (stage I)

Generally, the stage I melanomas are treated by wide excision (the surgical removal of melanoma along with a margin of normal skin that surrounds it). The margin and extent of normal skin which has to be removed will rely on the thickness and the location of melanoma.

If cancer cells are spotted on sentinel lymph node biopsy, a dissection on lymph node (the removing of all lymph nodes that are near the cancer spot) is recommended, but it’s not much guaranteed that this improves the survival.

Treating stage II melanoma

The standard treatment for stage II melanoma is Wide excision (surgical removal of melanoma affected areas and a slight margin of normal skin very close to it). Since the birth of chance that melanoma may have spread to nearby lymph nodes, usually, doctors suggest doctors sentinel lymph node biopsy too. This is an alternate option that you must discuss with your doctor. Once it is done and sentinel node is found to have cancer cells, a lymph node dissection (surgical removal of all lymph nodes in that area) has to be done.