CPMC Skin Cancer Services

If you’ve been diagnosed with skin cancer (melanoma), you want to find the best treatment possible. With early detection, melanoma is almost always curable. At California Pacific Medical Center, the Center for Melanoma Research and Treatment offers the most advanced diagnostic and treatment options available today, including new highly effective therapies.

At the Cancer Center, multidisciplinary panels of experts—including radiologists, pathologists, surgeons, oncologists and others—review every case together, in meetings called tumor boards, to combine their collective expertise and craft an approach that best fits each patient. Our acclaimed Cancer Nurse Navigator Program provides you with a single, compassionate and knowledgeable point of contact for every step in your cancer journey, from genetic counseling and testing to financial concerns.

Our experienced and knowledgeable team includes some of the most well-known melanoma specialists in the nation. Mohammed Kashani-Sabet, M.D., the center’s medical director, is a renowned dermatologist who has been treating melanoma and cutaneous lymphomas for more than 20 years. He is also a recipient of the Humanitarian Award from the Melanoma Research Foundation for exemplary patient care, research and scientific leadership.

Biopsy Procedures

Melanoma specialists use a variety of surgical procedures to get a sample of cells (skin biopsy) or remove an entire growth. On-staff dermatopathologists examine tissue samples from each biopsy to confirm cancer and determine type and severity. 

• Shave biopsy — the top layer of cells on a growth are shaved off with a surgical knife.
• Punch biopsy — the doctor uses a tool that looks a cookie cutter to remove a more extensive tissue sample, going deeper into skin layers.
• Incisional and excisional biopsies — the doctor surgically removes a portion of the growth (incisional) or the entire growth (excisional).

To determine if a melanoma has spread to other parts of your body, your doctor may do a lymph node biopsy. Rather than removing all nearby lymph nodes, which can cause troubling side effects, doctors often do a procedure called sentinel lymph node mapping (or sentinel lymph node biopsy).

If cancerous cells are found in the sentinel node, the doctor might remove all of the other nearby lymph nodes (lymph node dissection) and have them examined in the lab.

If removing a melanoma leaves a significant scar, you may choose to have reconstructive surgery to improve your appearance.

Medical Therapy

Traditional chemotherapy may also be used to treat melanoma, but it’s not used as often as these newer approaches.

• Immunotherapy/biologic therapy is the use of substances that take advantage of the immune system to kill cancer cells.
• Targeted therapy uses drugs to focus on specific targets within cancer cells, like a protein or other cellular functions, disrupting them and causing the cell to die.
• Novel clinical trials through the CPMC Center for Melanoma Research and Treatment.

Finding new options to treat melanoma is an essential part of what we do. Working with the California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute allows us to offer you some of the most current treatments.

Radiation Therapy

Your doctor may suggest external beam radiation therapy to treat melanoma. It is most often used to treat the area where lymph nodes were removed, rather than the skin area where the melanoma arose. Our radiation oncology unit houses linear accelerators to ensure prompt and precise treatment. Linear accelerators have on-board imaging, increasing accuracy, and stereotactic radiotherapy and stereotactic radiosurgery capabilities.

Special Services

Being treated for melanoma can have a major impact on your life. Throughout your treatment, doctors and specialists will work with you to provide pain management and palliative care services to help you maintain a good quality of life.

You might also want to take advantage of some of the special services and support we offer, such as support groups and help from social workers, psychologists and nurse navigators.