Once someone is diagnosed with melanoma, it is important to find out how deep into the layers of the skin the melanoma has grown and if it has spread to areas close to where it started such as the lymph nodes, or to more distant areas such as the liver, lungs or brain. To find this out, the physician may order a variety of blood tests, X-rays, scans and other special tests.
Treatment is based on what stage the melanoma is in at the time of diagnosis.
The first step in staging is surgical removal of the melanoma. Then the pathologist, a physician specially trained in diagnosing disease, examines the melanoma under a microscope to determine its type. The pathologist determines how deep into the skin layers the melanoma has grown. Wallace Clark, Jr., M.D., University of Pennsylvania Medical School, developed a classification system. You may view a picture of the normal skin layers with Clark's Level classification on the right side.