The only way to diagnose any type of skin cancer, including squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), 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 doctor will remove the entire growth or part of it. Your physician 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 SCC, your doctor will consider many factors to determine which treatment will be best.
The type of treatment a patient receives depends on how deep the cancer has grown and whether it has spread.
Squamous Cell Carcinoma is often treated with:
- 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 SCC.
When the Squamous Cell Carcinoma is caught early, it may be treated by:
- Curettage and electrodesiccation: This treatment consists of two steps. First, your doctor scrapes away the tumor. Then electricity is used to destroy any remaining cancer cells. These two steps are repeated.
- Chemotherapy cream: Cream that contains a chemotherapy drug, 5-fluorouracil (5-FU), can be used to treat SCC in the earliest stage.
Outcome
With treatment, most SCCs are cured. Early treatment is recommended. When allowed to grow, this skin cancer can grow deep, destroying tissue and even bone. In some cases, SCC spreads to the lymph nodes and other parts of the body. This can cause serious health problems.