Comprehensive Care for Your Skin
At Fremantle Skin Cancer Clinic, our doctors have a special interest in skin cancer medicine and no referral necessary. We make it easy for you to have your skin checked. We perform advanced skin surgery if required. It’s important to have regular skin check-ups as they could save your life.
Aesthetic Medicine
Total Body Photography
Microdermabrasion
Photodynamic Therapy
Cosmetic Dermatology
Cosmetic Mole Removal
Skin cancer checks
Here at the FSCC, we perform a “gold standard” skin check, using a specialized camera called Dermatoscope which can highlight specific features of the lesion for clinical decision making.
We take digital photographs for any concerning lesions to allow in-depth, high resolution analysis of the lesion, and also stores images for monitoring if required.
Total Body 3D imaging may also be utilised for high risk individuals or at patient request (additional fees apply) – Comin soon
At the end of your skin check your doctor will discuss any suspicious spots they have identified, explain their concerns, and discuss the recommended treatment plan for each spot (see treatments options).
Diagnostics, including biopsy and Digital imaging
Biopsy
If any suspicious lesion is identified on clinical examination or dermoscopically, then a biopsy may be performed to take a sample (biopsy) for further analysis of the lesion at histopathology lab.
This may include
- Punch biopsy – taking a circular piece from the lesion of concern, usually around 3-4mm in diameter
- shave biopsy – this includes shaving off the lesion superficially, using a surgical blade, can be used for clinically superficial lesions
- Excision biopsy – sometimes its ideal to remove the entire lesion for histopathological examination, especially for moles with concerning features
Biopsy provides useful information regarding the type of skin cancer, the depth of skin cancerand also examine any risk features which allows planning of treatment options and clinical margins if surgery is required.
Digital imaging (photography) of skin lesions
Digital imaging (photography using computers) is an important aid in the monitoring, evaluation and detection of skin cancers. We use digital monitoring to:
- Closely examine skin lesions at high (30x to 50X) magnification
- Monitor skin lesions over time, to detect suspicious changes
- Automatically analyise characteristics of skin lesions such as symmetry, borders, size, presence of suspicious colours and structures
- Record the location of skin lesions in selected body areas (or the whole body) and pinpoint new or changing skin lesions
Based on the photographs of your skin lesions, we can decide whether:
- there is a reasonable possibility of skin cancer and the spot must be removed
- the chance of skin cancer is low, and the spot may be kept under observation and re-photographed later.
We use the latest imaging technology which allows us to easily observe the characteristics of your skin lesion and check for changes in your spots over time
Surgical and non-surgical treatments
Non-Surgical treatments
Common non-surgical treatments in Skin Cancer care are:
- Photodynamic Therapy – not available at our clinic
- Efudix
- Aldara
- Cryotherapy
These options can be used for specific type of lesions only, your doctor will discuss this with you for clinically appropriate lesions.
Surgical Treatment
The main aim of surgical treatment for skin cancer is to remove the lesion with appropriate clinical margin. This clinical margin will depend on the type of skin cancer, site and any additional risk feature identified in the biopsy.
The type of surgery will depend on the type of skin cancer, size and its location on the body. This could include:
- Simple Excision – usually in shape of ellipse
- Complex Excision – requiring flaps, graft and other complex surgical procedures
Doctors at our clinic are well experienced in simple and complex procedures including flaps and grafts to provide the best possible outcome for our patients.
Follow-up care and wound care
Our experienced nurses will apply appropriate dressing after the surgery and arrange a follow-up appointment for wound review. This might very between 1-5 days depending on the type and complexity of surgery. We will provide you information sheet for your wound care depending on the type of surgery you had.