Your doctor will plan your treatment by taking into consideration a number of factors including your age and general health, the type and size of the cancer, where it is on your body and what the cells actually look like under the microscope. The treatment you have will be tailored to your particular situation. Sometimes, people are asked to take part in a clinical trial of a new treatment.
A team of doctors will work together to decide on the best treatment for you. They will follow national cancer treatment guidelines. The team is known as a multidisciplinary team and will also include nurse specialists, psychologists and social workers.
Surgery for skin cancer can be done in a variety of ways. Small cancers can usually be removed under local anaesthetic. When larger tumours are removed, skin grafts are sometimes needed to replace the removed skin. A skin graft is a thin layer of healthy skin taken from another part of the body. This is done under general anaesthetic.
A very small number of patients with squamous cell skin cancers will have more major surgery to remove nearby lymph nodes. This is to see whether the cancer has spread into the lymph nodes.
Cryotherapy can be used to remove small skin cancers.
Radiotherapy can be a very effective alternative to surgery for basal and squamous cell carcinomas in areas of the face where surgery might cause scarring. It is also sometimes used for tumours that have grown into the deeper layers of the skin.
Chemotherapy is not often used to treat skin cancers. If it is used, it is usually as a cream that is applied directly to the cancer. More rarely, a course of chemotherapy is given by injection.
If you have any questions about your own treatment don’t be afraid to ask your doctor or nurse. It often helps to make a list of questions for your doctor. You may want to take a close friend or relative with you to appointments, who can remind you of questions you wanted to ask, and afterwards help you to remember what the doctor said.
More than 90% of patients with basal cell and squamous cell carcinoma are completely cured.
