Surgery
Metastatic melanoma that has spread to the liver can sometimes be treated with surgery. This is known as ‘resection’.
Unfortunately, people with metastatic melanoma can't always benefit from resection. Physicians look at four factors when deciding whether surgery should go ahead:
- Where the tumor is located
- How many masses there are
- Where the masses are distributed
- How much of the liver will remain following tumor removal
Although resection involves removing part of the liver, the remaining parts are typically able to grow back.
When deciding whether your tumors can be surgically removed, an important question is whether all the cancer from your liver can be taken out while leaving enough of the organ intact so that it can re-grow.
In some cases where too much liver would need to be removed in order to eliminate the cancer, doctors may first attempt to shrink the tumors and then undertake surgery.
Typically, this tumor shrinkage would involve the use of chemotherapy.
When some people with metastatic melanoma to the liver have too many tumors in their liver to allow for one surgical procedure, surgeons may undertake two operations.
This involves moving some of the cancer in the first operation. This may allow the liver to grow back before undertaking the second operation in which the remaining tumors would be removed.
Typically, this two-operation approach would be considered when there are tumors in both the left and right lobes of the liver.
For some metastatic melanoma to the liver patients, another surgical option may be laparoscopic liver tumor removal. This involves removing part of the liver with minimally invasive techniques. These require a smaller incision. And sometimes allow the patient to recover faster.
