See spot disappear

No skin off my nose

There it was looking back from the mirror … yet again. The tenacious, crusty red spot on the tip of my nose wasn’t going away despite weeks of hopes and salves.

To make matters worse, it seemed to be steadily enlarging with each passing month. There was no pain and the annoying pest clearly wasn’t a pimple at my age of 67 years old and counting.

In fact, my doctor had commented on the bump in recent months. “What’s that still festering on your nose? Looks like you might have a cancer growing.”

The phrase alone was enough to shift me backwards in the chair. There went all my comfy denial. We’ve all heard the horror stories of melanoma being a possible death sentence since it can spread to vital internal organs. And most of us naturally tend to imagine the worst.

As it would turn out, mine was diagnosed as a basal cell carcinoma. These scourges often develop from overexposure to sunlight. And although this form of skin cancer doesn’t metastasize like melanoma, it does grow and relentlessly dig ever deeper in the tissues around and beneath it, which, in many cases like mine, involve one’s screamingly conspicuous nose.

That diagnosis until now also has meant an expensive and radical remedy through reconstructive Mohs micrographic surgery. When one developed a basal or squamous cell cancer, there wasn’t any other effective treatment but to surgically cut out and around the affected area. The resulting hole is then surgically covered with transplanted skin flaps that hopefully regrow without too much disfigurement.

Thankfully, I was about to discover the latest game-changing technology that offered me an alternative that meant no invasive surgery, no pain, no inconvenience, not even a Band-Aid, and the overwhelming odds of a cure in weeks.

As it turned out, the skin cancer gods led me during a visit directly to Dr. David Wright of Santa Fe. He’s the only dermatologist in New Mexico today with an SRT-100 machine. The acronym stands for superficial radiotherapy, equivalent in radiation to a low-dose, very shallow X-ray (Google for a picture).

A cure meant I’d spend time twice each week for six weeks in the doctor’s office beneath this compact machine manufactured by Sensus Healthcare. The portable device delivers bursts of low-voltage energy precisely only onto the basal cells. A second cancer was discovered growing on my back. But no worries. Both cancers could be treated during each visit.

In essence, the radiotherapy treatment penetrates no deeper than the surface layer of the skin with photons that over time cause every developing cancer cell to safely slough away.

The process requires 13 of the 45-second treatments, delivered two to three times weekly. Medical researchers have determined that’s the precise number required to erase every skin cancer cell in the process of reproducing.

My treatments went pretty much like this: “Lie on your back. You’ll feel a bit of pressure on your nose as I attach the proper setting to precisely focus the beam. I’m also laying a protective shield over your eyes. Hold very still for a minute as I step out and the doctor administers the treatment.” Whine. Whirrrr. All done.

Dr. Wright said the technology was approved after a decade of research and testing. It boasts an impressive cure rate above 95 percent.“In a significant number of cases where sensitive areas such as the face are concerned, the treatment ensures there’s no disfigurement,” he said. Since the SRT was publicly marketed in 2011, 40,000 patients in 45 states have had their skin cancers treated without a reported problem, company officials told me.

“While not necessarily for everyone, I believe this treatment represents the wave of the future in effectively treating non-melanoma skin cancers,” added Dr. Wright. “I’ve had the success and results I expected.” I was only one of dozens of patients Wright said he already has treated with the SRT-100.

Writing in 110° magazine, Dr. Robert E. Beer, a Mohstrained surgeon, said he’s been using SRT treatments on his California patients and has witnessed dramatic reductions of tumors by the fourth treatment. By the 11th and 12th treatments, he noted, the cancers had vanished, which was what I experienced with Dr. Wright. The skin on my nose and back now have returned to smooth and normal.

Little wonder others (even outside mainstream medicine) are noticing this cost-effective technology at a time when skin cancers are reaching epidemic levels.

Unfortunately (and oddly), my understanding is that Arkansas remains among a handful of states yet to employ this relatively inexpensive breakthrough in erasing skin cancer.

Don’t Arkansas’ patients need this safe, effective alternative as much as those in New Mexico, Texas, Arizona and 42 other states? If not, why not? I can only hope superficial radiotherapy is soon available for skin cancer treatment here solely in the best interest of our patients, which for me is why the practice of medicine exists.

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Mike Masterson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at mikemastersonsmessenger.com.

Editorial, Pages 81 on 03/09/2014

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