Skin Cancer
Overview
A skin cancer diagnosis often means you will need to have surgery to remove cancerous or other lesions, to stop the spread of the cancer and to preserve your appearance. Basal cell carcinoma (BCC), squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) and Melanomas are malignant. Often all that is needed is simple surgical removal of the lesion.
A malignant melanoma, however, is more likely to spread, and often needs more complex treatments which can include surgery, radiation therapy, immunotherapy, and chemotherapy. Surgeons use a range of specialised techniques to remove cancerous lesions with minimal scarring, and can perform reconstructive surgery that will help reduce any disfigurement.
Procedure
Skin cancer removal for the sake of your health is the most important goal of surgery, but the procedure can cause disfigurement, and while reconstruction will help, there will be some visible scars, and possibly differences in colour or texture in the treated area.
You may need further treatment such as radiation therapy, and will need to have follow-up consultations to ensure that any new lesions are detected as early as possible.
If the skin cancer lesion is small Dr van der Walt can remove it by a simple excision, and then close the wound.
However, if there are cancerous cells under the skin that cover a much larger region he may, during the procedure, send frozen sections which a pathologist will examine, to ensure that all of the cancerous cells have been removed.
Reconstruction is necessary when the area affected is larger or likely to result in disfigurement.
This can be achieved with a local flap, also called adjacent tissue rearrangement, which is repositioned over the wound, using techniques that minimise or hide scarring. There are several flap reconstruction techniques for the face and body.
An alternative to flap surgery is skin grafting, a procedure in which skin is transferred from one area of the body to the wound site.