Feel Confident in Your Skin
Curettage
If you’ve recently been diagnosed with skin cancer, you’re likely feeling worried and confused. However, it’s important to know your treatment options and be proactive with finding a suitable cure. At Brentwood Dermatology, we offer several skin cancer treatments, including curettage.
Keep reading to learn more about curettage as a skin cancer treatment, or get in touch with our team if you have any additional questions about skin health.
What is curettage?
Curettage is a specific technique to remove cancerous or non-cancerous lesions. It’s a minimally-invasive and straightforward procedure that scrapes off lesions or skin growths with a curette (a circular or oval-shaped instrument).
Following the lesion removal, the area is then cauterized with an electrocautery needle, which produces burning heat, to destroy any residual malignant cells and control bleeding.
Additionally, to minimize discomfort or pain, the patient is given anesthesia before the procedure.
FAQ Section
In medical procedures, curettage means the removal of tissue or growth by scooping or scraping with a curette tool, which is a sharp metal tool shaped like a loop or circle.
Curettage is performed through the use of a curette tool and an electrocautery needle (electric needle). The procedure removes cancerous (skin cancer) and non-cancerous lesions by scraping away tissue with a curette and destroying tissue through the use of electrodesiccation (burning the area).
In most cases, dermatologists perform curettage in many layers to ensure the lesion or cancerous cells are completely removed. You can expect three cycles of curettage and electrodesiccation.
To minimize patient pain and discomfort, curettage is performed with a numbing agent or anesthesia.
Curettage is used primarily for small lesions or growths. In most cases, this type of treatment is not recommended for high-risk sites or aggressive forms of skin cancer, such as melanoma. Generally, curettage has the best cure rate for superficial basal cell or squamous carcinomas.
Curettage
Have questions or concerns? Please call us at 615.377.3448.