Home > Basal cell carcinoma

1 Forms

Various forms are recognised:

• Nodular: flesh-colored papule with telangiectasis . If it ulcerates, it becomes a "rodent ulcer" (ulcus rodens), an ulcerating nodule with (often) a pearly border.
• Cystic: rarer and hard to distinguish from the nodular form. It has a central cavity with fluid.
• Pigmented: a variant of the nodular form that may be confused with melanoma.
• Sclerosing/cicratising: a scar-like lesion.
• Superficial: a red scaling patch

All forms are more likely to occur on areas of the body that have had high cumulative sunlight exposure. Actinic keratosis (sunlight-induced skin damage) may be present around the tumor.

2 Diagnosis

The gold standard for diagnosis is a biopsy. In small lesions, the tumor is generally removed in its entiriety, while larger ones are biopsied first and surgically removed later if the biopsy result has confirmed that it is malignant.

3 Pathophysiology

Basal cell carcinomas develop in the basal cell layer of the skin. Sunlight exposure leads to DNA crosslink ing between thymidine residues. While DNA repair removes most UV-induced damage, not all crosslinks are excised. There is, therefore, cumulative DNA damage leading to mutations. Apart from the mutagenesis, sunlight depresses the local immune system, possible decreasing immune surveillance for new tumor cells.

4 Treatment

Most basaliomas are removed surgically. Margins of excision may be variable: sclerosing lesions may need a wider margin, as they develop processes that project outside the visible part of the tumor.

Some difficult cases respond to local therapy with 5-fluorouracil , a chemotherapy agent.

5 Prognosis

Basel cell carcinoma rarely metastasizesMetastasis is the spread of cancer from its primary site to other places in the body. Localised spread to lymph nodes is not normally counted as metastasis, although this is a sign of poor prognosis. Cancer cells can break away from a primary tumor, penet, but invades healthy tissue in the proximity. Rarely the cancer can impinge on vital structures and result in deathThis page deals with death, the cessation of life. For other meanings of death, see death (disambiguation). Death is a term that can refer to either the termination of life in a living system, or the state of that organism after that event. A common perce. The vast majority of cases do not lead to any complications.

6 Epidemiology

It is much more common in fair skinned individuals and males (men more commonly work outdoors). In the United StatesThe United States of America also referred to as the United States U. America ¹ or the States is a federal republic in central North America, stretching from the Atlantic in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west. It shares land borders with Canada in alone there are more than 400,000 new cases yearly.