Long Surgery Delays Common For Melanoma Patients On Medicare
Friday, April 10, 2015 - 08:50
in Health & Medicine
Melanoma is the leading cause of skin cancer¬related deaths and surgical excision is the primary therapy for melanoma. It is recommended that melanomas should be excised within 4 to 6 weeks of the diagnostic biopsy because surgical delay may result in the potential for increased illness and death from other malignant neoplasms, along with anxiety and stress. In a study that included more than 32,000 cases of melanoma among Medicare patients, approximately 20 percent experienced a delay of surgery that was longer than 1.5 months, and about 8 percent of patients waited longer than 3 months for surgery. read more