Melanoma Treatment

Hi,

My father (73 years old now) had skin cancer about 1.5 years ago, which was successfully removed.  The type was melanoma.  He was cancer free until now.  It seems the melanoma has spread to his bowl.  The tumors on his bowl are blocking the fluids from being flushed from his abdomen - causing ascites. We went to see Dr. Chapman at Memorial Sloan Kettering hospital in NY.  The only treatment he could offer was oral chemo that works on only 10-30% of patients.  If this treatment is not successful, it's a matter of months...

We also have an appt. to see Dr. Howard Bruckner at Cabrini Medical Center in NY.  Has any one heard of him? Does any one know of better tremtent for this type of cancer?  Please help.  My dad is all I got.

Ellen

I would personally recommend no surgery as it will lower his immune system to fight off cancer cells unless the tumours can be all removed in one single surgery. My father had the similar treatment with chemo drugs and sorafenib and it worked without any side effects. The tumours have eventually grown back (unfortunately the doctor didn't recommend surgery to finish off small tumours located at the same site). We then tried interferon or interleukin-2 with sorafenib and it makes him become ill and lost of appetite. I'm now not able to find a clinical trial for him in US as he has been through several treatments which excludes him from eligibility. I hope a drug called Temsirolimus will be approved before June07. It is primarily for kidney cancer and i read it is also used to test on melanoma. If your patient has not had any vaccine therapy before, it may be worth joining a clinical trial like MDX-010 or other vaccine or peptide therapy in Memorial. Unfortunately it didn't work for my father. There are also promising drugs Avastin (primarily for colon cancer) and Sutent (primarily for kidney cancer) but most oncologists may not mention them due to the high cost of medication. They may work in combination therapy. That's all i can say but as I have read, melanoma and kidney cancer are the toughest among all cancers which tumour often grows back even the drugs work initially. However, I still remain my faith that my father will go through this ordeal and create a miracle as there are things remained to be done. May luck be with you.