What is Metastatic Melanoma?
Metastatic melanoma isn’t the most common type of skin cancer but it is the most dangerous, as the melanoma cells spread to other parts of the body.
Melanoma isn’t the most common type of skin cancer but it is the most dangerous and the most rapidly metastatic. As metastatic melanoma grows, it starts to penetrate the epidermis and go into the dermis, which is where blood vessels and lymphatic channels are. From there, this malignancy can make its way to other organs.
The key is getting to the melanoma before it breaks the epidermis. The prognosis for patients with metastatic melanoma is under 10%.
In this video, Dr. Bobby Buka discusses how melanoma affects your body and ways you can treat the deadly disease. He delves into how melanoma cells have a protein that's turned on that cause the melanoma cells to keep dividing rapidly. They become unresponsive to the body's own signals to stop dividing, so this immortality of these cell lines lead to a rapid spread through lymph channels and blood to other parts of the body. Because of this, melanoma is often very difficult to treat.
Dr. Buka is a section chief at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Dr. Buka is also a diplomate of the American Board of Dermatology and the Society for Pediatric Dermatology.
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