Learn More About Melanoma
You will receive a call from a Florida Dermatology Specialists team member to discuss your results further.
Your biopsy showed a melanoma. It requires surgery for treatment.
Based on your pathology report, we can treat your melanoma in the office. It requires a wide excision, meaning a margin of 1cm taken around the cancer site and down to the bottom of the fat layer. We will perform the surgery with local anesthesia here in the office.
In an excision, the area around the abnormal mole is numbed like in a skin biopsy with an injection of local anesthesia.
Then, a margin of normal-appearing skin around the area is cut out and the wound is closed with stitches. In all cases, the tissue removed will be sent to the pathology lab and analyzed to make sure the margins are clear and the spot has been removed.
There is generally little to no wound care required at home. Stitches usually stay in between 10-14 days on the trunk and extremities, depending on the site of the surgery.
Activity like vigorous exercise, tennis, or golf may be limited during that time until stitches come out. In addition, there can be no underwater submersion until the stitches have been removed. This means no swimming or baths until then. Showering after the pressure bandage has been removed, 48 hours after surgery, is fine.
The risks of the procedure are small, but include bleeding, low risk of infection, further required surgery, cancer recurrence, and a scar. The recurrence rate is very low for excision of melanoma.
A melanoma like this does not require any imaging or scans, based on information we have from the biopsy report. You also do not need a referral to a medical oncologist, but we would be happy to make one should you so desire.
The surgery itself is therapeutic and nearly always curative.
It’s important to have this procedure done soon.
In addition, you will need to come for an examination every three months for the first year.
You will receive a call from a Florida Dermatology Specialists team member to discuss your results further.
Your biopsy showed a melanoma and it requires surgery for treatment.
Based on your pathology report, the doctor recommends that this melanoma should be fully removed by surgery (called a wide local excision) in conjunction with a lymph node biopsy. The thickness of your melanoma means that you are a candidate for a procedure called a sentinel lymph node biopsy. This is a staging procedure that gives the doctors important prognostic information for your melanoma. That requires an operating room procedure, which we do not perform.
We will refer you to a local specialist to have this procedure performed with the wide local excision to remove the melanoma.
We will also refer you to a local specialist in medical oncology for consultation.
For any surgical procedure, click here to review our Preoperative Concerns and Protocols for more information.