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11 treatment settings, 3 with more than one named option. Each section lays out the options the standard of care names, what each is for, the trials behind them with their recorded results, the side effects and cautions on record, and questions to ask. Built from the cancer page's standard-of-care rows; nothing here is advice for your case.
Answer a few questions from a report and read the guideline statement that applies, quoted word for word with its source. Educational aids, not advice.
Start with the reassurance, because it is true: the British Association of Dermatologists says basal cell carcinomas can almost always be cured and very rarely spread, and that most squamous cell carcinomas are low-risk skin cancers and can be cured. What frightens people is not the cancer, it is the operation, and almost nothing is written about it. There are four ways a wound on the face is closed and it is worth knowing which is yours before the day. Stitches, if the edges will meet. A skin graft, a thin sheet taken from a donor site (Cancer Research UK says usually somewhere not too obvious such as the inner thigh) and laid over the defect, which means a second wound where it came from; a shaved donor site heals by itself, a cut one is stitched. A skin flap, skin from immediately beside the wound moved across while still attached to its own blood supply, which is why the colour and texture usually match better; only specially trained dermatologists or plastic surgeons do them and more than one operation is sometimes needed. And fourth, the one people are least often warned about, leaving the wound open under a dressing to heal on its own over several weeks and up to two months, which is a recognised choice and not a failure. Near the eyelid, the nose, the ear and the lip the reconstruction is often handed to a different team, and the BAD names maxillofacial, oculoplastic and plastic surgeons as the ones who may repair a Mohs wound, so who removes the cancer and who closes the wound are two separate questions. Afterwards: Cancer Research UK says the scar is quite noticeable and red to start with and gets paler over time, that some are thick and raised, and that numbness, tingling and pain in the area are nerve injury and may improve with time. The NHS says most scars fade but that this can take up to two years or more, and that massage with a water-based cream, keeping the scar covered in the sun for at least a year and SPF 30 or more all help. One small thing nobody mentions: after a local anaesthetic to the middle or lower face you cannot feel anything until it wears off, so avoid hot food and drink because of the risk of burns.
This setting names no product or technology record yet; the approach above is the standard as written. Ask your team which specific treatments they mean.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
No side-effect rates or interaction flags are recorded for these options yet. The side-effect lookup and interaction checker cover the products that have them.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Mohs is described everywhere as a technique and almost nowhere as a day, which is the thing you have to get through. The British Association of Dermatologists leaflet describes it honestly. You arrive as for any appointment and are taken to a surgical suite. The surgeon marks and photographs the lesion, injects local anaesthetic (it stings for less than 30 seconds), removes the tumour with a rim of normal-looking skin, dresses the wound and sends you to a recovery bay. Your sample goes to the laboratory and is read under a microscope while you wait; the leaflet says it can take up to three hours to get the result. If any cancer remains, more anaesthetic is injected and another layer is taken, and the clock restarts. In 90 percent of cases the cancer has gone after one or two stages, but you could be in hospital for up to a day, and the leaflet says in its own words that more than one set of injections is often needed and that it can be a long and tiring day. You do not know at the start how much will come out or how big the wound will be, which is the part people find hardest, and the wound is only closed once the surgeon is satisfied. The drawbacks the BAD names itself are worth hearing: waiting lists are usually longer than for standard excision because fewer cases fit in a day, so the cancer could grow while you wait; it takes half a day on average against minutes for a standard excision; and not all skin cancers should be removed this way. What it buys: in the Dutch randomised trial of high-risk facial basal cell carcinoma, ten-year recurrence was 4.4 percent after Mohs against 12.2 percent after excision for primary tumours (not statistically significant) and 3.9 percent against 13.5 percent for recurrent ones (significant). Practical matters the leaflet is specific about: someone must drive you there and back, public transport is not advised afterwards, you can eat and drink, and bring something to do.
Multidisciplinary tumour boards are regular meetings where surgeons, oncologists, radiologists and pathologists review each patient's case with the full dataset and agree a plan before treatment starts. They are mandatory in the UK and for accreditation in the US, Europe and Germany, and change the diagnosis or plan in 10 to 30% of cases, though randomised evidence is lacking.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Written as a list a real person can follow rather than as a warning. Cancer Research UK's version for someone who has had one of these cancers is: close-weave cotton clothing, long sleeves and trousers; a wide-brimmed hat that shades the face and neck; sunglasses with 100 percent UV protection; shade between 11am and 3pm in the UK; never a sunbed; and sunscreen of at least SPF 30 with four or five UVA stars, used generously, reapplied regularly, alongside the shade and the clothing rather than instead of them, even on a cloudy day. A specialist may suggest SPF 50 on exposed skin. The BAD adds the timing that makes the difference: apply plenty 15 to 30 minutes before going out and reapply every two hours and straight after swimming and towel-drying. NICE NG34 (1.1.1) names the groups public health activity should focus on and a reader of this page is in at least one of them: a personal or family history of skin cancer, immunosuppression, a tendency to burn rather than tan, outdoor work or outdoor hobbies. Two things are usually left out. The first is vitamin D: Cancer Research UK says covering up reduces it, and that the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition recommends a 10 microgram daily supplement between October and March, and all year for people who are mostly indoors or who cover up outdoors, so ask rather than guess. The second is that none of this is retrospective. The damage that caused this cancer was done years ago and cannot be undone by anything you do now; what sun protection changes is the chance of the next one, which in a meta-analysis of 17 studies ran at 44 percent within three years of a first basal cell carcinoma. That is a figure for a group of people, not a prediction for you.
Drugs or surgery for people at high inherited risk, before any cancer appears.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Three things happen at once and only one of them is ever discussed. The first is the face. The BAD says larger basal cell carcinomas may leave larger scars after surgery which may cause concern, especially on prominent areas such as the face, and that is as close as most patient material comes to naming it. The practical answers exist and are underused: the NHS says a GP can refer you for skin camouflage or you can refer yourself online, that a trained professional colour-matches creams and powders to your skin, that they can be prescribed, and that a GP can refer you for talking therapy if a scar is affecting your mental health. Changing Faces is the UK charity for visible difference. The second is watchfulness. Once you have had one of these cancers, you are being asked to examine your own skin monthly, which means every new mark is now a question rather than a mark; in a study of 160 people after surgery for facial non-melanoma skin cancer, those with recurrent disease had a higher adjusted symptom severity score and poorer psychological quality of life than those treated once. The third is the one people find hardest to say out loud, that everyone around them has decided this does not count. It is not baseless: Cancer Research UK's own coping page says nearly everyone diagnosed with skin cancer can have a simple treatment that will cure the cancer, and that is true and is also the sentence people hear instead of sympathy. In the study of 400 patients scored on the disease-specific BaSQoL questionnaire, the mean subscores were 1.20 for the 'other people' domain, 1.01 for diagnosis and treatment, 0.90 for worries, 0.78 for behaviour and 0.40 for appearance; the overall impact was low to moderate and the highest-scoring domain was not the one about how you look. Both things can be true. It is the cancer most likely to be cured, and it is still a cancer, and being told how lucky you are is not the same as being listened to.
Psycho-oncology recognises and treats the anxiety, depression, fear of recurrence and existential distress that affect a third of people with cancer, using screening, psychotherapy adapted to cancer, and medication.
Meeting others in the same situation reduces distress and isolation, and randomised trials of supportive-expressive groups show better mood and pain coping. The once-famous claim that support groups lengthen survival did not hold up in a larger trial.
Cancer-related fatigue and anxiety respond to structured talking therapy that targets the thoughts and habits that keep them going. Randomised trials show benefits during treatment and, for persistent fatigue, years afterwards; guidelines recommend it.
Organised follow-up for the 18 million US and 50+ million global cancer survivors: watching for recurrence and second cancers, managing long-term side effects such as heart damage, infertility, neuropathy and fatigue, and helping people return to work and life.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
If you take drugs that suppress your immune system, and above all if you have had an organ transplant, almost every sentence on this page is more serious for you and the leaflets addressed to you are rarely the ones you are handed. The scale, from the joint leaflet of the British Association of Dermatologists and the British Society for Skin Care in Immunosuppressed Individuals: squamous cell carcinoma is 150 times more common in transplant recipients than in the general population and is the commonest skin cancer in this group, basal cell carcinoma is up to 10 times more common, a UK study found one in three people transplanted for more than 10 years had developed a skin cancer, by about 20 years roughly half will have had one, and two in three of those who have had one go on to have several. The population studies agree: in 10,476 Swedish recipients the standardised incidence ratio for squamous cell carcinoma was 121 and 198 for heart and lung recipients, and in a prospective study of 615 squamous cell carcinomas immunosuppression was an independent predictor of metastasis with a hazard ratio of 4.32. Four things follow. What counts as suspicious is different: pain in a growing skin lump is specifically flagged, and any new, painful, bleeding or non-healing mark goes to a doctor rather than to a wait-and-see. Sun protection is stricter: SPF 50 with five UVA stars, daily, all year, to all exposed skin including a balding scalp and the ears, and it applies to people with brown and black skin on immunosuppressants where routine sun protection would otherwise rarely be needed in the UK. Surveillance is individual: ask your team for the frequency and setting of your in-clinic skin checks rather than assuming there is a standard. And the immunosuppression itself is on the table: where someone has multiple or more serious skin cancers, the dermatologist may discuss with the transplant physicians whether reducing or switching it would reduce future cancers, and preventive acitretin or nicotinamide may be added. None of that is a decision to make on your own, and none of it should be a surprise.
Drugs or surgery for people at high inherited risk, before any cancer appears.
Multidisciplinary tumour boards are regular meetings where surgeons, oncologists, radiologists and pathologists review each patient's case with the full dataset and agree a plan before treatment starts. They are mandatory in the UK and for accreditation in the US, Europe and Germany, and change the diagnosis or plan in 10 to 30% of cases, though randomised evidence is lacking.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Excision with a measured margin of normal-looking skin, under local anaesthetic, in a few minutes. The standard margin is 4 mm, and it is not a convention: for basal cell carcinomas under 2 cm, marking the skin in 2 mm increments before Mohs surgery showed that 4 mm cleared more than 95 per cent of tumours, and the same method in cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma gave 4 mm for ordinary tumours and at least 6 mm for high-risk ones, meaning 2 cm or larger, grade 2 or higher, invading the fat, or in a high-risk site. Two practical corrections matter: a specimen shrinks between the skin and the pathologist's ruler, by 70 to 80 per cent of the measured width in one series, and dermoscopy moves the visible edge outwards in about one tumour in six. Cure is high and the cancer is almost always gone for good.
Magnified skin imaging and whole-body photo mapping, increasingly read by algorithms, to find melanoma early and avoid unnecessary biopsies.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Tumour at the inked edge means the operation did not clear it. It happens in roughly 3 to 15 per cent of excisions depending on the site and the series, most often on the nose, in infiltrative, morphoeic, micronodular and superficial multifocal subtypes, and where invasion goes below the dermis. What follows is a judgement: re-excision or Mohs surgery for aggressive subtypes, central facial sites and any squamous cell carcinoma, radiotherapy where further surgery is not possible, and observation where a frail person has a low-risk basal cell carcinoma at a low-risk site. In one series of 23 incompletely excised facial basal cell carcinomas, six recurred and all six were superficial multifocal, infiltrative or micronodular.
This setting names no product or technology record yet; the approach above is the standard as written. Ask your team which specific treatments they mean.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
No side-effect rates or interaction flags are recorded for these options yet. The side-effect lookup and interaction checker cover the products that have them.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
The tumour is removed in thin layers, each mapped and checked under the microscope while the patient waits, until every edge is clear. Because the whole margin is examined rather than a few slices of it, it clears more tumour with less normal skin, which is why it is used on the face and on aggressive subtypes. The evidence is one randomised trial, in 612 high-risk facial basal cell carcinomas in the Netherlands. For tumours that had already recurred it is clearly better: ten-year recurrence 3.9 against 13.5 per cent (p=0.023). For tumours being treated for the first time the difference never reached significance, 4.4 against 12.2 per cent at ten years (p=0.100), and at five years it was 2.5 against 4.1 per cent. The finding that should change practice is that 56 per cent of the primary-tumour recurrences happened after year five, which is why the five-year papers in this disease understate the problem. Mohs surgery cost 1,248 euros against 990 for ordinary excision.
This setting names no product or technology record yet; the approach above is the standard as written. Ask your team which specific treatments they mean.
Ten-year cumulative recurrence 4.4 per cent after Mohs surgery against 12.2 per cent after ordinary excision for primary high-risk facial basal cell carcinoma (p=0.100), and 3.9 against 13.5 per cent for recurrent tumours (p=0.023); 56 per cent of primary-tumour recurrences occurred after year five.
No side-effect rates or interaction flags are recorded for these options yet. The side-effect lookup and interaction checker cover the products that have them.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Scraping the tumour out with a curette and burning the base, in minutes, with no specimen to check. For the right tumour it is reasonable and it is how a large share of low-risk basal cell carcinomas are treated worldwide. The Danish Skin Cancer Registry followed 47,358 tumours treated this way in office dermatology and found five-year recurrence of 9.9 per cent and eight-year recurrence of 13.3 per cent, dominated by selection: 25.1 per cent at eight years for head and neck tumours, 16.7 per cent for tumours over 10 mm and 8.4 per cent for superficial ones. Used on aggressive histological subtypes it fails, with 27 per cent recurrence at a median 6.5 years in one series of 37 tumours, which is an argument for a biopsy first in anything not obviously superficial.
This setting names no product or technology record yet; the approach above is the standard as written. Ask your team which specific treatments they mean.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
No side-effect rates or interaction flags are recorded for these options yet. The side-effect lookup and interaction checker cover the products that have them.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Radiotherapy cures most skin cancers without an operation and is chosen for the person rather than the tumour: someone in whom surgery would cost an eyelid, a nostril or a lip, someone too frail or unwell for an operation, someone who refuses one, and after an incomplete excision that cannot be re-operated. It is second and not first because of the only randomised comparison ever run, in 347 patients with facial basal cell carcinoma, where the four-year failure rate was 0.7 per cent after surgery against 7.5 per cent after radiotherapy (p=0.003) and the cosmetic result was better after surgery on four of five independent judgements. Irradiated skin does not improve with time as a scar does. The techniques in that trial are not today's, so the gap is probably narrower now, but no one has repeated it.
Brachytherapy places a radioactive source directly inside or next to the tumour.
Electron beams stop within a few centimetres of the skin, so they treat surface tumours, scars and the whole skin without reaching the organs underneath. Most linacs make them; special set-ups spread them over the entire body or deliver them during surgery.
Four-year failure rate 0.7 per cent after surgery against 7.5 per cent after radiotherapy (p=0.003), with a good cosmetic result in 87 against 69 per cent by the patient's judgement and 79 against 40 per cent by the dermatologist's.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Everything above is the treatment of the keratinocyte cancers, basal cell and squamous cell carcinoma, which is what most people who are told they have skin cancer have. Melanoma is treated by a different logic: the margin is set by the thickness of the tumour rather than by a fixed 4 mm, the lymph nodes are staged with a sentinel node biopsy, and advanced disease is treated with checkpoint immunotherapy or with BRAF and MEK inhibitors. Creams, curettage and photodynamic therapy have no role in invasive melanoma. The melanoma page carries all of it and this page does not repeat it.
Immune checkpoint inhibitors are antibodies against CTLA-4, PD-1 or PD-L1 that release the brakes on T cells so they attack the cancer. They are approved in more than 20 tumour types and produce lasting, sometimes curative responses that chemotherapy rarely does, but most patients do not respond and autoimmune side effects are the cost.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.