How We Treat Skin Cancer

Surgery is the most common way to treat skin cancer. Your doctor will decide on the best surgical treatment based on the type, stage, size and location of your cancer. You may also need surgery to see if the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes, which could require other types of treatment after surgery. Doctors who do surgery for skin cancer include dermatologists, general surgeons, plastic surgeons and cancer surgeons.

Immunotherapy is used to treat advanced melanoma or melanoma that is at high risk of coming back. This treatment uses specific medicines to help your own immune system to recognize and destroy cancer cells. These medicines can be in the form of pills or injections or given through an IV.

Targeted therapy drugs target the parts of cancer cells that make them unlike normal cells. Approximately half of all melanomas are due to abnormalities in the BRAF protein gene. In targeted therapy, specific medicines target the BRAF gene without affecting most normal, healthy cells.

Targeted therapy drugs are different from standard chemotherapy medicines and may work when chemotherapy medicines don’t, often with less severe side effects.

Chemotherapy and infusion therapy use powerful medicines to kill cancer cells all through the body. Chemotherapy is sometimes used to treat advanced melanoma or lessen symptoms. For nonmelanoma skin cancer, chemotherapy is applied as a cream or ointment or delivered through an IV. Chemotherapy may be combined with other immunotherapy drugs.

Radiation therapy uses high-energy X-rays to kill cancer cells. This treatment is used primarily for nonmelanoma skin cancers in the form of electron beam radiation that goes only skin-deep. Radiation is not commonly used to treat melanoma, but may be used to kill cancer cells that remain on the lymph nodes after surgery, treat recurring melanoma, treat tumors in other areas of the body and relieve symptoms.

Targeted therapy drugs target the changes in cells that cause cancer cells to form. These drugs affect the cancer cells in your body and leave your normal cells alone. This treatment course sometimes works when standard chemotherapy drugs don’t, and they often have different (and less severe) side effects. Targeted therapy drugs come as pills that you take at home.

Targeted drugs are proving to be particularly beneficial for people with kidney cancer as chemotherapy has not been shown to be effective. If fact, many times this treatment course is tried before chemotherapy is considered.

Tumor ablation treatment destroys a tumor without surgically removing it from the body. This is often the medical recommendation when you’re too sick to have surgery. Ablation techniques include heating the tumor with radio waves (known as RFA), freezing the tumor (known as cryoablation), or killing the tumor by blocking certain blood vessels and cutting off the blood supply that feeds the kidney.

You should always talk to your doctor about your specific treatment plan and what you can expect.