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One of the more frequently missed cancers, but one of the cancers with the best prognosis if promptly diagnosed and treatment is malignant melanoma. This cancer is the result, in many cases of too much sun exposure and its incidences has dramatically risen as Americans devote increasing amounts of time to become "bronzed and beautiful." At www.cancerlinksusa.com/melanoma/index.htm, it is easy to access the National Cancer Institute: Melanoma for Patients web site, as well as to find other hyperlinks. NCI presents the latest clinical definitions, stage definitions and treatment and treatment options in lay terms. The site offers detailed medical information for patients who suffer from malignant melanoma. At another hyperlink, Malignant Melanoma, there is a general description of melanoma and its various forms with an explanation of its stages and how treatment is applied during these stages. Click on Melanoma Patients' Information Page, which provides an informative guide to online malignant melanoma resources and corrals a wide range of medical resources to help patients monitor and participate in their own cancer management. In addition, at Melanoma Research Project Network, there is access to comprehensive information on malignant Melanoma and skin cancer: diagnosis, treatment options, follow-up and recent research data. You can also request an individual consultation. Much of the information is meant for patients, but it can be also very useful for an attorney who wants to know about standard-of-care issues, treatment availability, statistics and what to expect in terms of eventually developing witness testimony.
The National Cancer Institute web site for melanoma is located at http://cancernet.nci.nih.gov. For more general items, access PDQ, a computer system that uses up-to date information on cancer and its prevention, detection, treatment and supportive care. It is a service of the National Cancer Institute for cancer patients and their families and for doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals. To ensure that it remains current, the information in PDQ is reviewed and updated each month by experts in the fields. PDQ also provides information about research on new treatments (clinical trials), doctors who treat cancer and hospitals with cancer programs. The treatment information in this summary is based on information in the PDQ summary for health professional on this cancer. PDQ can be used to learn more about current treatment of different kinds of cancer. PDQ can also provide the names if additional health care professional who specialize in treating patients with cancer (or other diseases). Before a patient begins treatment, this site tells about an interesting option: whether to participate in an NCI study. A clinical trial is a research that attempts to improve current treatments or finds information on new treatments for patients with cancer. Clinical trials are based on past studies and information discovered in the laboratory. Each trial answers certain scientific questions in order to find new and better ways to help patients with cancer. Information is collected about new treatments their risks and how well they do or do not work. When clinical trials show that a new treatment is better that the treatment Currently used as "standard" treatment, the new treatment may become the standard treatment. Listings of current clinical trials are available on PDQ. Many cancer doctors who take part in clinical trials are listed in PDQ.
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