Skin Cancer Treatments

City of Hope’s approach to treating skin cancer starts with a coordinated, multidisciplinary care team whose main goal is offering you the best, most individualized treatment plan. Your plan includes the newest therapies — including immunotherapies — and innovative treatment combinations effective for even the most advanced skin cancer and melanoma patients.

We treat patients at all stages of disease, from initial diagnosis to advanced stages, including those with:

  • Recurrent disease
  • Metastatic disease
  • Disease that has spread to lymph nodes
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The goal for everyone we treat revolves around options, starting with the important opportunity to participate in clinical trials at every stage of your cancer. This provides you with leading-edge treatments and access to studies that will define the next generation of best treatments. Our treatment approach involves:

  • Consultation with a specially trained comprehensive dermatology group
  • A layered, thorough and accurate diagnostic process led by deeply experienced pathology staff
  • Regular input from experts in various subspecialties at every stage of your treatment
  • Near-constant refinement of therapies designed to adapt to changes in your disease
  • Best-practice prevention and management of all treatment-related side effects

Surgery

Surgery is the most common treatment for all types of skin cancer. The goal of surgery is to completely remove the cancer while trying to preserve healthy tissue.

Nonmelanoma Skin Cancer Surgery

  • Curettage and electrodessication involves numbing the cancerous area and using a spoon-shaped instrument (curette) to remove the cancer.
  • Simple excision is a procedure in which cancer, along with surrounding normal tissue (called a margin), are removed using a scalpel.
  • Shave excision involves removing tumors affecting only the top skin layers. A small blade is used to remove the tumor at its base.
  • Cryosurgery uses cold to destroy cancer cells and involves spraying liquid nitrogen onto the tumor. This process freezes and destroys the cells, which eventually fall off.
  • Laser therapy uses a narrow beam of intense light to remove cancer cells.
  • Dermabrasion removes layers of skin using particles or a device that rubs away skin cells.

Read about the treatment options for melanoma

Advanced Technologies

City of Hope’s skin cancer surgery team routinely performs complex operations for advanced skin cancers — and uses advanced minimally invasive technologies, such as robotic sentinel lymph node biopsy, to accurately identify whether and how far cancer has spread.

And frequent collaborations between our skin cancer and plastic surgery teams ensure that procedures are performed that minimize deformity and complications; restore appearance; and preserve quality of life.

For cancer that has spread, our experienced surgical team performs minimally invasive procedures such as pulmonary metastatectomy, a robotic surgery procedure designed to remove tumors that have spread to the lungs.

Clinical Trials

City of Hope clinical trials include access to the latest drug therapies and combinations to treat skin cancer and melanoma. Many are based on the genetic changes driving tumors so that therapies may be tailored to specific mutations — others use unique combinations of immunotherapy agents.

Promising new treatments as part of our clinical trials program include new and investigational therapies.