When most people think of skin cancer and skin cancer treatment, they think about the most common forms of skin cancer such as melanoma and squamous cell carcinoma. However, there are also other, albeit rarer, forms of skin cancer including lymphoma of the skin. Lymphoma of the skin is different from other skin cancers because it is rare and because it is a cancer of immune system cells specifically. This cancer can spread rapidly throughout the body and often requires more aggressive treatments. If you have been recently diagnosed with lymphoma of the skin, you may wonder what treatment options are available to you to help you deal with your newfound skin cancer. There are several treatment options available for your lymphoma of the skin. Get to know a few of them so that you will be prepared when you meet with your oncologist to get the process started.
Surgery
When you initially went in and were diagnosed with lymphoma of the skin, the reason you sought treatment likely had to do with the fact that you had unidentifiable skin lesions that worried you. Sometimes, lymphoma of the skin may be treated surgically to completely remove these lesions from the surface of your skin.
This is often a treatment that does not stand alone, meaning that it is paired with other options that will address any potential cancerous cells that developed outside of those lesions. However, sometimes the skin cancer is isolated to those areas and can be completely removed surgically.
Radiation Therapy and Chemotherapy
Lymphoma of the skin may also be treated with radiation therapy and/or chemotherapy. Radiation therapy involves beaming high energy light (like a much stronger form of getting x-rays) into areas where of the skin and body where cancer cells have been found.
This energy is designed to damage and destroy the cancer cells while doing minimal damage to the healthy cells in the body. This form of treatment occurs over the course of several sessions and is painless when it occurs.
Chemotherapy is a form of treatment that involves administering powerful drugs systemically (meaning they circulate throughout the body) that are designed to destroy cancerous cells from within the body. This treatment can be taken orally in pill form sometimes, but is more often given in the doctor's office or hospital intravenously directly into the bloodstream. Chemotherapy and radiation therapy may both be used to treat lymphoma of the skin depending on the stage of the cancer as well as how far and where it may have spread.
With this knowledge for your primary treatment options, you can begin your treatment process for your lymphoma of the skin feeling more confident in your knowledge of what is to come. Just remember that even though these are some of the main options for treatment, there may be others that your oncologist will recommend as well as treatments being developed frequently that may be even more effective.
To learn more, contact a company like TrueSkin Dermatology & Surgery, Inc.
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