What is "curettage" and "electrodessication"?

What is "curettage" and "electrodessication"?

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...

When a patient is diagnosed with a basal cell carcinoma or a superficial scremiso carcinoma we have an option of removing the diseased skin by a very simple method called curettage and electrodessication. That is a procedure by which the lesion is locally anesthetized. It is scooped out and then curetted or scraped. The reason why scraping is so effective is the tumor cells do not stick together and the normal cells do. So, it'd be somewhat like removing the brown spot in a banana. There's a different texture that's palpable to the operator. When that is done, the lesion is then hyphercated or lesion is burned by an electrical current which gives another margin of cells that are destroyed to give another margin of certainty to removal. Often that procedure is repeated two times or sometimes even three times. It is again, only really valuable on superficial lesions not very invasive lesions and has in appropriate circumstances an approximately 90 to 95 percent sucess rate in removing the tumor. It does however, leave a noticeable scar and so for a cosmetic standpoint is often not the best choice that we can use.