Skin Cancer: What are the Possible Treatment Approaches?
Skin cancer is a highly curable cancer type if detected early and the treatment begins on time. There are majorly three type of treatment approach that is used commonly to treat skin cancer which are:-
Surgery
It is the most common method of treating cancer. A skin cancer surgery involves removing the area affected by skin cancer and having cancer cells. Sometimes, there is also a need to remove the area surrounding the skin which is affected by skin cancer in order to prevent the cancer from redeveloping in the surrounding areas.
Radiation Therapy
Radiation therapy method is like an option a doctor would use to prevent the cancer from redeveloping in the skin or if the surgery is not able to completely remove the skin cancer cells. In this, a high-energy radiation is used in order to kill the cancer cells or stop the growth of the cancer cells.
Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy involves use of non- invasive methods in order to kill or stop the development and growth of cancer cells. It includes prescribing some medicinal drugs to take or some topical lotion or crams to apply for a particular time period.
There are also some less known and used methods that are in rare cases used by doctors to treat or stop the spread of cancer cells. These includes:-
- Photodynamic therapy: It involves using drugs or light to kill cancer cells.
- Immunotherapy: It involves using the patient's immune system power to kill and stop the cancer cells growth.
- Targeted therapy: Involves using drugs or other substances to attack specific cancer cells.
- Cryotherapy: It includes using liquid nitrogen to freeze cancer cells.
- Curettage: In this, cancer cells are scraped out.
- Cautery: In this, cancer cells are burned.
- Imiquimod cream: A cream that can be used instead of surgery.
Before Treatment Comes Detection and Diagnosis, So What are the Ways?
The most used and safe method to detect the presence of cancer in a patient’’s body is Mole Mapping. It is also known as total body photography. Mole mapping is a non- invasive method of cancer detection, which involves the doctor taking high-resolution images of a patient’s entire body or taking pictures of the areas of the body suspected to have cancer in them like moles and skin spots.