Communication Between Patients, Doctors Crucial After Melanoma Surgery
Source: Cure Today, January 2024
Patients with melanoma play a vital role in their own post-surgical care, as one expert explained to CURE®.
“Patients that are coming to see us, once they have (received) a diagnosis of melanoma, they are often very concerned, especially when they learn about the disease and how aggressive it can be,” Dr. Justine V. Cohen, a medical oncologist with Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, said. “And so, they want to follow up and they want to be seen.”
The provider’s goal, Cohen explained, is to detect any post-surgical recurrence of melanoma as early as possible. The stage of a patient’s disease can provide valuable insight into potential recurrence risk, because, as Cohen explained, “then we can devise a good plan for that patient, how often they need to come back, do they need scans, do they just need a history and physical, how often they should be checking their blood work, etc.”