Treatment for Skin Cancer Options

Carcinoma treatment comes in various forms. It is your duty to stay updated about the various things that can happen when the skin doctor is called and how best to choose which skin cancer therapies are right for you.

Surgery

It should not be surprising that surgery is the top option for treating skin cancer. It is still the most efficient way of dealing with tumors – removing them completely. For skin cancers, though, surgery is also used for diagnosis. Usually, these surgeries, called excisions, leave a scar because it involves pulling the skin out and then stitching it back together.

For cancers that stay limited to the top layer of the skin, electrodesiccation is a very prominently used form of surgery. It involves pulling cancer out of the body with a long, thin instrument with a sharp, looped edge on one end called a curette. After the tumor has been pulled out, an electrode is used to destroy any remaining cancer cells.

Mohs micrographic surgery is a time-consuming surgery that is employed in an effort to save as much of the good skin as possible. It involves removing a layer of skin and checking it under a microscope for cancer cells. If cancer cells are seen, then another layer is removed. So on and so forth. This surgery happens when the tumor is focused around sensitive areas like the eyes and fingers.

Radiation Therapy

Radiation therapy happens by exposing tumors to high-powered beams or particles and killing the cancer cells directly without making any incisions. It is mostly employed when either the tumor is too large to be removed with surgery or the patient is not strong enough to undergo surgery. It can also be used to stop the growth of skin cancers and slow down the symptoms of such growth.

Receiving radiation therapy is a lot like getting an X-ray done, except the beams are aimed more specifically at the tumor. It is limited to the skin so as to stop the emergence of side effects in other parts of the body.

Yes, radiation therapy can have side effects, and some of the more commonly sighted ones are listed below:

Systemic Chemotherapy

While it is rare for skin cancers to reach an advanced stage, it is always a possibility, especially if you have a rare kind of cancer like MCC. It is in these cases that systemic chemotherapy becomes a viable option.

Systemic chemotherapy involves the injection of anticancer drugs into the patient, either intravenously or orally, every few weeks or so. These drugs travel the length and breadth of the body through the bloodstream and either relieve symptoms or shrink the tumor enough so that they can be removed by surgery or treated with radiation therapy.

As we all know, chemo drugs cause side effects, though the manner and intensity of their manifestation depend very much on the kind of drug and dosage used. Some of the possible side effects are: