Treatment with chemotherapy

Treating metastatic melanoma to the liver effectively is hard. In fact, therapy is often given as palliative care. In other words, its not intended to eliminate the cancer completely but rather is given to enhance the quality of a patient's life by easing discomfort and pain.

That said, some metastatic melanoma to the liver patients have seen their lives extended greatly following treatment.

One of the most common forms of treatment is chemotherapy given to the entire body. This is known by physicians as ‘systemic chemotherapy’.

A variety of drugs may be used when systemic chemotherapy is used to treat the disease. These drugs may be used alone or in combination with each other.

Dacarbazine (DTIC) is a chemotherapy drug that is often used to treat metastatic melanoma to the liver. Other commonly used chemotherapy drugs include cisplatin and carmustine.

However, treating metastatic melanoma to the liver with systemic chemotherapy presents a number of problems. One of the main ones is that the liver is very good at breaking down chemotherapy drugs. In other words, at reducing their effectiveness.

Also, the drugs don’t just attack tumors in the liver. They can also damage healthy tissue in the liver and elsewhere in the body. Therefore, simply boosting the dosage to overcome the liver’s resistance to systemic chemotherapy may cause more problems than it solves.

That’s why metastatic melanoma to the liver is often targeted with systemic chemotherapy plus other treatments at the same time.

These other treatments target tumors in the liver directly. Common examples are surgery, ablation and transarterial chemoembolization.

Another option is joining a clinical trial to test a potential new treatment. Besides possibly offering a better outcome, joining a trial is a positive way to help researchers find better treatments for metastatic melanoma to the liver.