Treatment for any form of cancer is dependent on a wide variety of factors, and this is no different for melanoma. Essentially in the case of melanoma, the treatment is divided into treatment focused for the early stages and for the ones where cancer cells have spread beyond the layers of the skin.

1. How does early-stage melanoma treatment work?
When the cancer is at the starting stages, the first course of action recommended by doctors is surgery to remove the melanoma. This can be easily removed through biopsy if the melanoma is thin, and that would not require any further treatment. If the melanoma is sitting on the borders of the skin and about to seep into the layers below, then there would be a certain amount of surgery required. Usually, for the early stages, this is all that would be required as part of melanoma treatment.

2. How does melanoma treatment for cancer that has spread below the skin work?
This is dependent on how far the seeping is and whether the cancer cells have spread extensively. Some of the most common treatment options in these stages would be:

• Surgery
  This would be the most viable option if the melanoma has started spreading to the lymph nodes nearby, and thereby require removal of those affected nodes. There might certain degree of additional treatments included in case the spread is extensive than anticipated.
• Chemotherapy
  The main objective of any chemotherapy treatment is to flush the body with the right combination of drugs to destroy the cancer cells in totality. This can be done through the use of oral drugs or may be prescribed as an intravenous solution. Sometimes, in chemotherapy melanoma treatment, the doctor rightly recommends a more focused form where only the single limb is treated in isolation. They would ensure that the blood from the selected limb would not travel to any other part of the body during the course of treatment as you do not want the risk of melanoma spreading and is more concentrated only on the affected region.
• Radiation therapy
  This mode of treatment enables the killing or shrinking of the melanoma by using high powered rays. This can be given as a stand-alone treatment or in tandem with surgery, or even in combination with other treatments so that the lymph nodes are eradicated if they have been affected and bear more effect in terms of treatment in general. This is also used as a method of helping control any symptoms that may be manifested due to the cancer cells spreading to another area in the body.

There are two other forms of melanoma treatment that may be used and they are biological therapy and targeted therapy. These are each distinct in their approach as the former is used to boost the immune system to effectively fight against melanoma, while the latter is used to only focus on the specific traits of the melanoma being exhibited by the patient.