Can a curette be used for skin cancers?
Limited numbers of skin cancers can be treated with the curettage technique. These are selected skin cancers that grow only on the outer skin surface. Cancers growing into the deepest skin layers are not suitably treated with curettage. Curettage is also used for benign lesions such as some premalignant sun damaged lesions as well as warts and selected moles and birth marks. The knowledge of which skin lesions can be managed with the curette and which cannot is actually quite involved and requires much training. My doctor wants to combine curettage with another treatment modality? Commonly curettage is combined with cryotherapy or electrodessication (ED). The idea here is that after the curette has scraped off all apparent abnormal cells, the 2nd modality kills a further layer of tissue, thus further reducing the risk of the cancer persisting or recurring. ED is a burning treatment. It has the advantage that it stops most bleeding. However, it can lead to scarring. Cryotherapy does not
