The number of people diagnosed with skin cancer continues to rise each year- even as awareness of the risk grows. The most deadly form of skin cancer- melanoma, also continues to rise… but with advances in treatment, fewer are dying. National Health Reporter Erin Billups takes a look at a newly FDA-approved treatment using immunotherapy, that is offering many new hope.
A routine ultrasound during a mammogram appointment offered a disappointing discovery for Nancy Schroeder, a mass in the lymph nodes of an armpit. She was already a skin and breast cancer survivor.
“Of course, everyone’s thinking breast cancer again, because it’s in the same lymph node area. I was stunned when my internist said melanoma. I got melanoma from what?” said Schroeder.
The cancer had spread from a melanoma removed from her back four years earlier. “I’d forgotten about this thing on my back. And one little cell can travel. Any kind of cancer that metastasizes.”
Which is why Schroeder jumped at the chance to take part in a clinical trial at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, for a combination immunotherapy treatment training the body to fight the cancer before removing the tumor. It was her second time taking part in a clinical trial at MSK. The first was during her bout with breast cancer.
