Skin Cancer Treatment
Overview
Skin cancer is the most common type of cancer. The main types of skin cancer are squamous cell carcinoma, basal cell carcinoma, and melanoma. Melanoma is much less common than the other types but much more likely to invade nearby tissue and spread to other parts of the body. Most deaths from skin cancer are caused by melanoma.
General information about Skin Cancer
- Melanoma is a disease in which malignant (cancer) cells form in melanocytes (cells that color the skin).
- There are different types of cancer that start in the skin.
- Melanoma can occur anywhere on the skin.
- Unusual moles, exposure to sunlight, and health history can affect the risk of melanoma.
- Signs of melanoma include a change in the way a mole or pigmented area looks.
- Tests that examine the skin are used to diagnose melanoma.
- After melanoma has been diagnosed, tests may be done to find out if cancer cells have spread within the skin or to other parts of the body.
- Some people decide to get a second opinion.
- Certain factors affect prognosis (chance of recovery) and treatment options.
Read the full article on the National Cancer Institute website.
Complementary Therapies for skin cancer.
Complementary therapies that you can add to your conventional treatment to help improve survival, reduce side-effects, improve quality of life, and prevent recurrence.
Additional Info – Non Melanoma Skin Cancer
Mole Screening Clinics
If you’re concerned that a mole or skin lesion could be cancerous, you can have it checked out by a dermatologist or other professional trained in early skin cancer detection.
This could save you unnecessary surgery and is painless, fast and very reasonably priced.
In Ireland you can get checked at the following clinics (there are others):
Outside Ireland: Check for similar services in your own area.
Mohs Micrographic Surgery
Mohs surgery. A surgical procedure to remove a visible lesion on the skin in several steps. First, a thin layer of cancerous tissue is removed. Then, a second thin layer of tissue is removed and viewed under a microscope to check for cancer cells. More layers are removed one at a time until the tissue viewed under a microscope shows no remaining cancer. This type of surgery is used to remove as little normal tissue as possible.
Source: National Cancer Institute
This2022 studyof 71 studies (16,575 patients) concluded:
Local recurrence of melanoma is significantly lower after Mohs Micrographic Surgery (<1%) and staged excision (3%) compared with wide local excision (7%).
This Systematic Review 118 publications says:
Our pooled analysis suggests lower rates of local recurrence and deaths attributable to disease after Mohs micrographic surgery, despite the fact that tumours treated by this method are likely to be at higher risk…
Last updated April 2026