Treating Basal Cell Carcinoma and Other Types of Skin Cancer
Skin cancer is the most common kind of cancer. Each year, more people are diagnosed with skin cancer than with all other types of cancers combined. But not all skin cancers are alike. Here’s a guide to the three most common types.
Basal Cell Carcinoma
Basal cell carcinoma (BCC) is the most common type of skin cancer. Each year, at least 800,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with this type of skin cancer. Fortunately, basal cell carcinoma is rarely serious. It spreads slowly, and it is curable in about 95 percent of all cases. It’s important to detect it early, though, for the best treatment results.
Basal Cell Cancer is found most often in light-skinned people, and overexposure to the sun is an important risk factor for this type of cancer. Other risk factors include exposure to arsenic or radiation or complications affecting scars, burns, or tattoos.
Depending on where the cancer is on the body and how extensive it’s spread, doctors may treat basal cell carcinoma in different ways. Some superficial basal cell carcinomas are treated with topical chemotherapy - medicines that are applied to the skin to kill the cancer cells. Others are treated by cryosurgery, which involves freezing the cancer with liquid nitrogen to destroy it. Still others are treated by minor surgical procedures, many of which can be performed right in the dermatologist’s office. Basal cell carcinomas that are located on the face, lips, or scalp and those that have come back after treatment may be treated with laser surgery.
Squamous Cell Carcinoma
The second most common type of skin cancer is squamous cell carcinoma. About 200,000 cases are diagnosed in the United States each year. Like basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma is usually curable.
Squamous cell carcinoma is most often found in light-skinned people, especially those who have had much exposure to the sun. It usually develops in areas exposed to the sun, but it can also develop in scars or skin ulcers at any location on the body.
One group of people at especially high risk for squamous cell carcinoma is organ transplant recipients. People who have had organ transplants have to take medicines that suppress their immune systems so that their bodies won’t reject the transplanted organ. These medicines increase susceptibility to squamous cell carcinoma.
Treatments for squamous cell carcinoma come in a variety ways. Superficial cancers on the skin’s surface may be treated with topical drugs or cryosurgery (freezing with liquid nitrogen). Deeper or more extensive skin cancer types may be treated surgically. Large squamous cell carcinomas, or those located in difficult-to-treat areas such as the eyelids, nose, or ears, are sometimes treated with radiation therapy.
Melanoma
Over 60,000 people are diagnosed with melanoma in the U.S. alone. This type of cancer, which affects the melanocytes (cells in the skin that produce the dark pigment melanin) is a more serious matter than basal cell carcinoma or squamous cell carcinoma because it can spread rapidly. And if it spreads, it can be fatal. Melanomas that are detected early are more than 90 percent curable. But melanomas that are detected late may be deadly.
Like the less serious types of skin cancer, having light-colored skin and spending a lot of time in the sun are factors that could lead to melanoma. Both long-term overexposure to the sun and occasional severe sunburns are believed to increase melanoma risk. Melanoma sometimes runs in families, and some cases have a genetic component. Suppression of the immune system by drugs or disease increases the risk of melanoma.
When patients are diagnosed with early-stage melanoma (melanoma that has not spread to other parts of their bodies), the highest priority in melanoma treatment is to remove all of the melanoma cells. This usually means surgery to remove both the melanoma and an area of the surrounding skin, to make sure that all of the cancer is gone. In most instances, if the melanoma was detected soon enough, this type of surgery will cure it.
If melanoma has not been diagnosed until it has spread to other parts of the body, it is usually not possible to cure the disease anymore. Instead, patients receive various kinds of palliative therapy to relieve symptoms and improve their quality of life. This may involve surgery, but the surgery will not cure the widespread disease. Radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and biological therapy may also be used to help control symptoms.