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NONMELANOMA SKIN CANCER (NMSC)
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Nonmelanoma skin cancers are extraordinarily common, accounting for approximately 3 million new cases per year in the United States alone.
Multiple treatment options are available, ranging from EDC to excision to Mohs surgery.
Treatment decisions should be guided by both patient and tumor characteristics, and should always be individually tailored.
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Beginner Tips
Common treatment options for NMSC include EDC, excision, and Mohs micrographic surgery.
The cost and ease of simple options such as EDC should always be weighed against both the increased healing time and decreased efficacy of these approaches when compared with excision or Mohs.
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Expert Tips
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Don’t Forget!
Select patients and tumors may benefit from primary medical management with topical or intralesional therapies.
All surgical therapies entail risk, but this should be weighed against their effectiveness, rapid healing, and low recurrence rates.
LN2 treatment for NMSC is fundamentally different from AK treatment; intensity and depth of freeze must be significantly greater in order to lead to tumor destruction, and this will likely lead to significant surrounding tissue damage and hypopigmentation.
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Pitfalls and Cautions
Simple approaches such as cryotherapy and EDC should not be used on tumors at significant risk of recurrence.
Appropriate tumor and patient selection for medical management or treatment with cryotherapy or EDC is critical; for example, some BCCs demonstrate both superficial and nodular growth patterns.
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Patient Education Points
Full informed consent includes a discussion of both the ease of a particular procedure and the length and complexity of the healing process.
Remind patients that even with very low rates of recurrence or complications, those numbers are not zero. Patients may otherwise fail to appreciate that a 98% chance of tumor clearance without complications means that, for a surgeon who treats 100 patients per week, 2 patients weekly may have these undesirable outcomes.
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Billing Pearls
The AUC for MMS represent a guideline for patient and tumor selection, but individual LCDs also govern these decisions.
Documentation is critical, and medical necessity is the ultimate arbiter of appropriateness.
Some patients have poor (or no) prescription medication coverage; for them, medical management is generally not desirable.
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Nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC) is the most common malignancy in the United States, with over 3 million cases annually.1 NMSC is more common than all other malignancies combined, and its incidence continues to increase.2 This burden has translated into a significant year-on-year increase in disease-related spending.3 As the incidence of NMSC continues to rise, there are significant public health, patient safety, and cost implications, making it imperative that clinicians be able to effectively treat NMSC.