Current Options for Treating Non-Melanoma Skin Cancers

Valencia Thomas, MD, MHCM, Department of Dermatology, Division of Internal Medicine, MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses the current landscape regarding non-melanoma skin cancers.

Non-melanoma skin cancers affect millions of individuals each year with some of the most common consisting of Basal cell carcinoma, Merkel cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma, according to Thomas. However, a lot of time and focus is projected on the management of squamous cell carcinoma as it results in high amounts of morbidity.

At the recent National Comprehensive Cancer Network Annual Meeting, Thomas along with other experts ran a session on managing patients with aggressive non-melanoma skin cancers. The session highlighted a variety of the recent innovations in the management of non-melanoma skin cancers as well as common or uncommon tumors as well.

Transcription:

0:08 | We focus our session on the advanced or aggressive non melanoma skin cancers that either didn't read the book and stay gone once they were treated the first time, or the ones that started off in an advanced detection. For example, 25-35% of Merkel cell carcinomas are already present in the lymph node at the time of biopsy. Even though some of these cancers are rare or aggressive, we have multiple treatment options, multiple different surgical treatment options, radiation options, and systemic options that either alone or when combined can give patients a wonderful opportunity for cure.