Treatments for common skin cancers in Singapore

These are the ways Basel Cell Cancer (BCC) can present (itself) to you, like a pink spot on the nose, pink spot on the ear, pink spot on the cheek that is getting bigger. How come the surface break away? How come its bleeding? Why is it painful? That's not normal. Be aware that in Asia, because we are darker skin the beast cancers in us are usually more brownish black compared to Caucasians’ pink colour. So if it's blackish, be a bit careful. Sometimes (we) get multiples also. So people who get multiple skin cancers, usually we do a bit of genetic screening, because it affects not just you, but also your family members.

How about Squamous Cell Cancer, the second most common one? Squamous Cell Cancer, usually is more alarming, because there are bigger sized than Basal Cell Cancer. They get larger. They ooze a lot of pus coming out. And it occurs on more sites other than the face. They can occur on their hands, on the forearm, on the legs and so on. How do we treat all these simple skin cancers?

So as with everything in cancers, the earlier you get it checked, the easier the treatment is, right? The smaller the spot, the easier for me to remove for you. You can either remove by surgery, simple surgery. Or if you don’t want surgery, we have other simpler techniques like freeze therapy, like give you something to freeze the lesion or to put (give you) a cream for you to put at home. The treatment choice of skin cancer generally depends on what size the lesion is when you come to see us, and what options they are because surgery might not be suitable for everybody. If let's say your relatives are like aged 95, has an instance of Parkinson's or stroke or heart disease, sometimes they might not tolerate surgery very well. So in this case, we might choose nonsurgical methods, like creams or other ways to do it.

How about the Melanoma, the most deadly one? Thankfully this is very, very rare in Singapore. Rare, but not to dismiss it, because they spread very fast. They spread to the skin to the blood, to your lymph nodes, to your brain, to your heart, to your lung, to everywhere else. How do they look like? They are black. You can feel it, and then after a while, you feel there's a lymph node swelling, or something is growing elsewhere. Melanoma treatment will be a bit more different from the other two. This one needs more detailed checks. Because you do a staging. So staging will be ke other cancers. You need to stage, is it early or middle stage or late stage. Generally for Melanoma it is still surgery, followed by chemotherapy, followed by RT if necessary.