What is the Best Treatment For Skin Cancer?

Skin Cancer Treatment

What is the Best Treatment For Skin Cancer?

The treatment for skin cancer will depend on the type of cancer you have and the severity of the problem.

Basal cell cancer is usually found on the face only and is very treatable. Squamous cell cancer is found on those areas that are frequently exposed to the sun. It is very curable but only if caught before it has spread to other organs.

Melanoma skin cancer is the most dangerous and life threatening form of this disease because it can spread very quickly. If your doctor suspects melanoma, depending on where you live, he/she do a biopsy and possibly arrange for a computerized screening of your skin. This involves taking a digital image of the lesion and comparing it to a database of pictures of non-malignant and malignant disease. It is an extremely accurate form of diagnosis.

If the above digital screening is not available, a surgeon will remove the lesion plus an element of the healthy skin around the spot, mole or freckle. He/she has a delicate job as he/she needs to remove all of the potentially malignant tissue, but at the same time does not want to take too much as it may interfere with subsequent treatment.

A pathologist will then examine these cells under a microscope. If the sample is malignant, it will be staged depending on the thickness within the skin, whether it has ulcerated and/or spread to surrounding tissue or nodes.

Stage 0 is non-malignant melanoma which has not yet shown any signs of turning cancerous. Stages 3 and 4 are the most dangerous, as it has already spread and is therefore much more difficult to treat.

If you have stage 3 or 4, you will be sent for a CAT scan to see if there are any secondary cancer sites that are visible. Chemotherapy is usually used if the cancer has spread to distant organs. It used to be thought that if melanoma skin cancer has spread to other sites it was an automatic death sentence.

Treatments have have improved and surgery has proved to be quite effective.

There are new treatments for skin cancer being developed all the time. If you have been diagnosed with this disease do not give up hope. A positive attitude is sometimes half the battle. Get the best help and advice you can from properly qualified doctors, who will do everything in their power to help you beat this disease.

Beating Melanoma: A Five-Step Survival Guide (A Johns Hopkins Press Health Book)
by: Steven Q. Wang
publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press, published: 2011-03-15
ASIN: 0801898900
EAN: 9780801898907
sales rank: 483888
price: $10.99 (new), $11.33 (used)

Dr. Steven Q. Wang, a world-renowned skin cancer expert, provides an essential guide for people with melanoma and their families.

The book’s unique, practical format approaches the disease in two phases, just as people with melanoma need to do. First comes a step-by-step guide for what Dr. Wang calls the “mad rush” phase—an intense and stressful period from diagnosis to completing initial treatment. Dr. Wang’s calm guidance helps readers through this critical time, using an easy to understand plan for ensuring optimal treatment and survival outcomes. Once the mad rush phase is over, the “marathon phase” begins—life resumes its normal shape but with lingering concerns about new melanoma and metastases. Here Dr. Wang addresses common questions about prevention and prognosis.

Beating Melanoma offers current research in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of melanoma; photographs of different kinds of skin cancers; and a readable narrative that demystifies everything from the pathology report to the stages of cancer. The only book to outline detailed instructions for melanoma patients at all stages of their disease, it is a guide that people with melanoma will turn to with confidence.

Saving Your Skin: Prevention, Early Detection, and Treatment of Melanoma and Other Skin Cancers
by: Barney J. Kenet
published: 1998-07-31
ASIN: B000HWYZPC
sales rank: 3110638
price: $6.70 (new), $0.25 (used)

An all-around guide, “Saving Your Skin” includes information on how to detect melanoma in its early stages–with descriptions of what it is and what causes it–how to fight sun, the skin’s worst enemy; how to perform a skin self-exam at home; how to pick a dermatologist; patient support networks; and more. Color photos. Illustrations.

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