Is chemotherapy effective in treating skin cancer?

Is chemotherapy effective in treating skin cancer?

Harry Saperstein, MD, FAAD (Dermatologist, Clinical Assoc. Professor, Medicine, Private Practice and UCLA) gives expert video advice on: How are early-stage melanoma skin cancers treated?; What types of radiation therapy are used to treat skin cancer?; Does laser therapy have a role in treating skin cancer? and more...

The efficacy of chemotherapy in treating skin cancer varies. The use of chemotherapy in basal cell carcinomas is completely ineffective and completely unnecessary. Basal cell carcinomas do not metastasise or do so at an infinitesimal rate. They do not require chemotherapy and are destructive locally, and therefore they merely need to be removed locally. In some very rare instances squamous cell carcinomas can metastasise when they are large or under certain clinical circumstances, such as on mucous membranes or on patients who are immunosuppressed. Chemotherapy may have some role as well as radiation in those patients. In malignant melanoma, which is the skin cancer which does metastasise, chemotherapy is adjunctive. It is something that is used along with other things. It can, in certain cases, slow down growth, but is rarely, if ever, curative.