Skin Cancer

Basal Cell Carcinoma

 

What is basal cell carcinoma?
Basal cell carcinoma (BCC) is the most common form of skin cancer, but is also the most easily treated and least likely to spread. They can cause extensive damage to surrounding tissue and bone if not removed.

What are the symptoms?
They typically develop on sun-exposed areas, especially on your head and neck. They can also occur in places that don't see much light. Basal cell tumors usually take these forms:

• Sore that won't heal or bleeds a lot
• Pearly white or waxy bump with visible blood vessels on your face, ears or neck. The bump may bleed, develop a crust or form a depression in the center. In darker skinned people, this type of tumor is usually brown or black.
• Flat, scaly, brown or flesh-colored patch on your back or chest that can get very large.
• White, waxy scar: may be a sign of morpheaform basal cell carcinoma, but rare

What are the causes?
New skin cells usually push older cells toward the skin's surface, where the old cells die and fall away. But this process of cell death and renewal becomes defective when the DNA gets damaged, and cells grow uncontrollably into a cancerous tumor. Most of the environmental damage to skin cells comes from exposure to UV radiation from sunlight. Other factors may include therapeutic radiation, chemical toxins, and immunosupressant drugs.

Risk factors
Frequent sun exposure or living in a sunny or high-altitude location increases your UV exposure. Other risk factors include fair skin that sunburns easily, a personal history of skin cancer, smoking, skin infections or injuries, weakened immune systems, and rare genetic disorders. Also, men are more likely to develop the tumors than women.

See your doctor if you have:

• A skin sore that bleeds easily or doesn't heal after two weeks
• A sore that repeatedly crusts or oozes
• Visible blood vessels in or around a sore
• A scar in an area where you haven't injured yourself

Diagnosis
After taking a complete medical historyand checking the affected area of skin, your doctor may remove a small skin sample for examination by shaving off the top layers of skin with a surgical blade. Tumors that have spread deeper into the skin may be partially or completely removed.

Complications
Untreated cancers can invade and destroy nearby muscles, nerves and bone. BCCs often recur, usually in the same place. A history of BCC may increase the chance of developing more serious types of skin cancer.

Treatments

• Electrodesiccation and curettage. often used for tumors located on your trunk, arms or legs; done by removing the surface of the skin cancer with a scraping instrument and then burning the base of the tumor with an electric needle; usually only done for new tumors
• Surgical excision: doctor cuts out the cancerous tissue and a surrounding margin of healthy skin, can be done for both new and recurring tumors. The plastic flap is usually needed to close the wound after a large cancer is removed.
• Freezing: freezing cancerous cells, good for people with more than one tumor
• Mohs' surgery. removing the tumor layer by layer, examining each layer under the microscope until no abnormal cells remain, good for deep and fast-growing tumors or recurring ones
• Laser surgery: laser is used to vaporize superficial basal cell carcinomas. More expensive, not better than surgery.
• Topical treatments: some superficial basal cell carcinomas are treated with creams or ointments, such as imiquimod and 5-fluorouracil