Depending on the skin cancer diagnosis, treatment may include any of the following surgeries:
- Curettage and electrodessication – Curettage involves surgically scraping the cancer off. Electrodessication is burning the remaining cells to kill them. This process usually goes in cycles of scrape, burn, scrape, burn.
- Completion lymph node dissection – A completion lymph node dissection is when a surgeon removes all of the lymph nodes in a certain region after a sentinel lymph node biopsy has already found melanoma cells in the first (sentinel) node.
- Lymph node dissection – This is when a surgeon removes one or more lymph nodes to check if the cancer has spread into the body’s drainage system (the lymphatic system). For basal cell cancer this is rarely necessary.
- Mohs surgery – This involves a layer-by-layer removal of skin cancer where the surgeon checks the tissue under the microscope during the procedure to make sure all cancer cells are gone before closing the wound.
- Shave removal – Shave removal involves shaving off the tumor from the surface of the skin.
- Standard excision with narrow margin – This involves cutting out the skin cancer along with a small rim of normal-looking skin around it.
- Standard excision with sentinel lymph node biopsy – A sentinel lymph node biopsy is a procedure where the surgeon finds and removes the very first lymph node (or nodes) (the “sentinel node”) that drains fluid from the cancer area. This node is the most likely placed where cancer cells would go if they were starting to spread.
- Standard excision with wide margins – This involves cutting out the skin cancer along with a larger rim of normal-looking skin around it.
- Wide local excision – Wide local excision is when the surgeon cuts out the Merkel Cell Carcinoma with a wide rim of normal-looking skin around it.