SKIN cancer campaigners have welcomed moves to make a drug routinely available to Scottish patients with advanced melanoma after research showed it substantially reduced the risk of the disease recurring.

The Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) said nivolumab - known by the brand name Opdivo - could be prescribed to high-risk patients with stage three or four malignant melanoma following surgery to remove tumours.

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Until now, patients in this position were simply placed on a 'watch and wait' regime and regularly scanned to check for signs of the cancer returning.

For the first time, doctors will be able to offer a treatment that helps prevent that from happening.

In clinical trials, 63% of patients receiving Opdivo did not experience a recurrence of their cancer over a two-year period.

Leigh Smith, chair of Glasgow-based skin cancer charity, MasScot, said: "It is a hellish disease and it affects more young adults than any other cancer.

"The awful thing is it so often affects young parents with children still at school, if they've even reached school age.

"It's not uncommon to have girls who have a one year old or a two year old contact us looking for some moral support and reassurance.

"So we do think that it would be of great benefit to patients to have treatment at this earlier stage, so that hopefully it will be more successful."

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Currently, around half of patients with stage three malignant melanoma will survive for at least five years, but this falls to 10% for men and 25% of women diagnosed with stage 4 disease.

The SMC's decision bring NHS Scotland into line with England and Wales, where Opdivo was made available in November.

Malignant melanoma is the fastest growing cancer among men in Scotland, with annual diagnoses up 29% in a decade. Overall, for both sexes, there were 1383 new cases in 2017, a 15% rise in the past 10 years.

In 2017, skin cancer claimed the lives of 185 people in Scotland and the mortality rate was the highest in five years.

Foreign holidays and increased use of sunbeds in recent decades has been blamed for driving the increase.

Olivia Jex, a married mother-of-one from Kemnay in Aberdeenshire, is among those who blames sunbathing for her battle with life-threatening skin cancer.

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The 35-year-old social worker, originally from Northern Ireland, was first diagnosed with a stage one melanoma in November 2009 in a mole near the top of her right arm.

She said: "I was working in a children's residential home at the time, and it was one of the kids there who kept saying to me 'you need to get that checked'. It wasn't a mole that was itchy, irregular, bleeding - it wasn't causing me any problem, it was just red and a little bit raised.

"But I was at the doctor's for something else so I just said 'can you have a look at this for me'. They took it off, and two weeks later it came back that it was stage 1 melanoma.

"When I was in my late teens I spent a lot of time in America in the summers sunbathing. You wanted to come back to Northern Ireland with the best tan possible because that was all the rage.

"I wouldn't say I used sunbeds excessively, but I would have occasionally used them at university and in the run up to a holiday, so I do believe that my sunbathing and use of sunbeds could have contributed to my melanoma unfortunately."

Over the following two years, Ms Jex was scanned every three months but was repeatedly reassured by medics that her melanoma was so thin - 0.6 of a millimetre - that there was barely any chance of it returning.

But in July 2016 - seven months after her daughter, Molly, was born - she began experiencing pain in her right breast.

"A subsequent CT scan detected at 4cm tumour, and doctors confirmed that the melanoma had returned and was now stage three.

Four weeks later she had surgery to remove lymph nodes under her armpit, but other than scans every six months to monitor her body for tumours there was no other treatment available.

"It was quite traumatic trying to move on to be honest," said Ms Jex. "But I had to get up and keep going for Molly and you're trying to convince yourself that you're in the lucky 50%.

"I had two clear scans, then in July this year unfortunately it came back in my lung.

"I'd had no symptoms. I was running 20 miles a week, I was back to work, I was feeling fine, MasScot were funding me to go to hypnotherapy and counselling, and I felt at a good point.

"I was almost like 'here we are at the 18 month mark, this is pivotal if it's clear' - but that day, the longer I waited, I just knew something wasn't right."

Surgeons managed to remove the tumour in her lung successfully, and finally, in November, her consultant at NHS Grampian succeeded in obtaining Opdivo for her under an individual patient treatment request (IPTR).

Now, the drug - which is administered intravenously every two weeks - will be routinely available to her on the NHS.

She said: "My mental health is much better this time around - I'm much more able to enjoy my life knowing that we're doing something pro-active, whether it's prolonging it coming back or stopping it coming back.

"I'm just so grateful that there's a treatment now."

Anyone seeking support following a skin cancer diagnosis can contact MasScot on 07738231260.