The best way to diagnose any type of skin cancer, including basal cell carcinoma (BCC), is with a skin biopsy. Your doctor can perform this procedure during a visit.
A skin biopsy should not cause anxiety. To perform a skin biopsy, your physician will remove the entire growth or part of it. Your doctor may send this to a laboratory or look at it under a microscope. The findings will be communicated in a biopsy report.
If the biopsy report states that you have BCC, your physician will consider many factors to determine which treatment will be best for you.
There are several ways to treat BCC:
- Excision: This is a surgical procedure that your doctor often can perform during a visit. It involves numbing the area to be treated and cutting out any remaining tumor plus some normal-looking skin around the tumor.
- Like the skin biopsy, this removed skin is examined under the microscope. This is done at a laboratory. The doctor who looks at the removed skin needs to see whether the normal-looking skin is free of cancer cells. If not, more skin will need to be removed. This is a common way to treat BCC.
- Curettage and electrodessication: This treatment consists of two steps. First, your doctor scrapes away the tumor. Then electricity is used to destroy any remaining cancer cells. The two steps are then repeated.
- Cryosurgery: This treatment uses liquid nitrogen to freeze cancer cells, causing the cells to die.
- Medicated creams: Creams that contain a drug, such as imiquimod or 5-fluorouracil, can be used to treat early BCC. A patient applies the medicated cream at home as directed by his or her physician.
- Pills: While extremely rare, there are reports of BCC spreading to other parts of the body. Patients who have BCC that spreads may be prescribed vismodegib. This medication also may be prescribed for patients who have advanced BCC that cannot be cut out or treated with radiation.
Outcome
Nearly every basal cell cancer can be cured, especially when the cancer is found early and treated.