Therapy | Mole or skin cancer

Therapy

Malignant melanomas are surgically removed. No biopsy (tissue removal) of the primary tumor is performed in order to prevent degenerated cells from spreading into the blood or lymphatic system. It is important that the malignant tissue is removed over a large area.

This involves removing the tissue under the tumor up to the muscle fascia (muscle skin). This is done in order not to leave any degenerated cells in the skin, as otherwise a recurrence (recurrence of the disease) would be quite likely. If the “malignant mole” is on the face or the acra, one refrains from such a radical operation.

A more fine-mechanical procedure is used, in which the edges of the cut are precisely controlled by a microscope. This is called microscope-controlled surgery. In addition to surgical measures, there is also the possibility of using chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

This is the case when the disease is very advanced and metastases are found. There is also the so-called immunotherapy, in which the immune system is stimulated and can thus fight the cancer cells. However, the chances of a cure are not so good if the cancer has already spread, i.e. metastases have formed in other organs and lymph nodes.Nevertheless, the therapeutic measures can bring about an improvement in the state of health. After undergoing therapy, patients are more frequently sent for skin cancer screening to ensure that no new malignant changes occur.

Prognosis

Only an experienced dermatologist can assess whether a mole is at risk of developing into a melanoma and how high this risk is. In principle, freckles, cafe-au-lait spots and small lentigos (lentigo simplex and lentigo solaris) do not pose a risk of developing into a melanoma. However, the situation is different for certain types of liver spots such as dysplastic nevi.

Although they are not considered to be melanoma precursors, there is an increased development of melanoma in people with very many of these dysplastic nevi (DNA=dysplastic nevi syndrome). Congenital nevus cell nevi (congenital benign brown skin lesions) also carry an increased risk of developing melanoma with increasing size. However, they are not liver spots in the conventional sense and are only listed here for the sake of completeness.