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Dr Kara Heelan
The Royal Marsden
Are there non-surgical options for treating skin cancer?
Transcript
We have several non-surgical options, in particular for non-melanoma skin cancer.
These include cryotherapy, which is when we treat a skin cancer with liquid nitrogen, so you're trying to locally disrupt the cancer.
Then we have other treatments such as PDT, which is photodynamic therapy.
This is when a photosensitising cream is applied to the skin, and then a patient is either exposed to daylight or to a lamp to target the abnormal cells in the skin.
We have a range of different creams which are used to either activate the cancer or to activate the immune system to fight the cancer.
And then sometimes we use radiotherapy in patients when we can't surgically excise a lesion.