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Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy drugs such as Dacarbazine have been the backbone of metastatic melanoma treatment since FDA approval in 1975; however, its efficacy in terms of survival has never been proven in an RCT. Since the approval of immune checkpoint inhibitors, dacarbazine and its oral counterpart temozolomide constitute potential treatment options in later lines of therapy.

Multiple drugs are available to patients to decrease the size of the tumor. By lessening the size of the tumor, some symptoms can be relieved; however, this does not necessarily lead to remission. Some of these drugs are dacarbazine, temozolomide, and fotemustine. Combinations of drugs are also used and, in some cases, present higher remission rates. These medication combinations can have harmful side effects. To maintain quality of life, patients require assistive treatments and observation. Although combinations of drugs increase remission rates, the survival rate does not show an increase.

In people with locally advanced cutaneous malignancies and sarcoma, isolated limb infusion (ILI) has been found to be a minimally invasive and well-tolerated procedure for delivering regional chemotherapy.