Skin Cancer Surgery

Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the United States. There are three basic types: basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and malignant melanoma. If the cancer is small, the procedure can be done quickly and easily, in an outpatient facility or the physician's office, using local anesthesia. The procedure may be a simple excision, which usually leaves a thin, barely visible scar. Or curettage and desiccation may be performed, in which the cancer is scraped out with an electric current to control bleeding and kill any remaining cancer cells. Other possible treatments for skin cancer include cryosurgery (freezing the cancer cells), radiation therapy (using x-rays), topical chemotherapy (anti-cancer drugs applied to the skin), and Mohs surgery, a special procedure in which the cancer is shaved off one layer at a time. All of these treatments have good cure rates for most basal cell and squamous cell cancers, and even for malignant melanoma, if it's caught very early.