What types of radiation therapy are used to treat skin cancer?

What types of radiation therapy are used to treat skin cancer?

Skin cancer's basal cell carcinomas and squamous carcinomas are sometimes treated by radiation therapy, in particular radiation therapy is used to treat small lesions in very cosmetically sensitive areas or on small lesions in patients who are too sick or have too many complications to undergo surgery. I usually send somewhere in the neighbourhood of five to ten patients a year for radiation therapy for small basal cell carcinomas on the tip of the nose, in elderly patients in particular, because this is such a high cosmetic area, and cancer surgery does leave some cosmetic deficit. The problem with radiation therapy is that it is very time consuming – you have to go four to five times a week for about three to five weeks – and that it does change the texture of the skin surrounding the tumour. Radiation therapy may also lead to additional skin cancers 10 to 15 years later so it is not an appropriate treatment for young people. Radiation therapy is relatively bloodless, it is painless, and again, those people who are too senescent or ill to undergo surgery, radiation therapy is one of the alternatives that we have. Radiation therapy is not appropriate for primary malignant melanoma, and it is not used whatsoever to remove the atypical cells. That is always done by surgery.