After the mole has been removed, most people are cured and don’t need any more treatment.
wide local excision
You have this operation under a general anaesthetic as an outpatient, so you don’t have to stay overnight. The surgeon takes away normal looking skin around the melanoma. This is to make sure there are no melanoma cells left behind and also to see if it has spread. They normally remove 1cm of skin all around the melanoma but this can be more depending on how deeply the melanoma has spread into the skin. If a wide or deep area of skin is taken off, you may need to have a skin graft.
skin graft
A skin graft happens when the surgeon takes a layer of skin from one part of the body (usually the thigh) to cover a wound. How much skin they take depends on the size of the area being covered.
