Does anyone know about the surgery to remove malignant melanoma. I am having it done Mon morning. ?
It is a stage four so they are going to take lymph nodes as well, Just wondering how the surgery will go. This is not my year. I had a heart attack on March 1 and quadruple bypass on March 4 and now this. Yikes!
Missy, I’m terribly sorry to hear of all these calamities. Firstly, I’m not a dermatologic surgeon, so I can simply provide you with some basic info about it. I’m not very familiar with staging of melanoma, but generally many surgeons will do a sentinel lymph node biopsy (pretty easy imaging) procedure to see whether there’s lymph node involvement (if it hasn’t been determined yet). Then there are basically two approaches based on excisional margins for a lesion: the conventional one resects a lesion using very large margins to make sure they get every last bit of it. Mohs micrographic surgery is a bit more refined in that it used more sophisticated techniques to narrow the excisional margins.
Beyond that, I really can’t offer much but my best wishes for a successful outcome. Depending on your clinical situation, your physician is in the best position to determine the appropriate surgical management of your ailment.
I wish you the best.
Here’s some high-tech academic info about Mohs which may not be all that helpful, but I figure I’ll include it fyi:
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Surgical margins for excision of primary cutaneous melanoma.
JA Zitelli, CD Brown, BH Hanusa – J Am Acad Dermatol, 1997
It depends on the site, usually it done under local anesthesia, but because there will be LN biopsy(or dissection) then it may be done under general anesthesia, again it depends on site, grade and stage and sites of metastasis (if present). to determine the type of surgery.anyway, it will not hurt you(it is not painful) except for post opertaive pain at site of surgery..
wish you good health.