What Are the Advantages of Seeing a Specialist for Skin Cancer?
What Are the Advantages of Seeing a Specialist for Skin Cancer? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.
What are the advantages of seeing a skin cancer specialist? Dr. Anna Pavlick highlights how specialists offer expertise in managing complex cases, like large lesions or tumors with associated lymph nodes, ensuring up-to-date treatment and collaborative care with local physicians.
Dr. Anna Pavlick is a medical oncologist and the founding Director of the Cutaneous Oncology Program at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian. Learn more about Dr. Pavlick.
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Transcript:
Katherine:
What is the advantage of someone seeking care or to have an appointment with the skin cancer specialist?
Dr. Pavlick:
Although for me, skin cancer is my life, skin cancers to the point where they require a medical oncologist are not all that common. Basal cell cancer and squamous cell cancer are very, very common in our population, but many times, they are managed by the dermatologist where you have an excision or you have a Mohs procedure. You don’t ever need to see an oncologist. However, if you have a very large lesion or you’ve got a lesion and you’ve got an associated lymph node or you’ve got a lesion that has what we call satellites or little tiny, I call them cousin tumors surrounding the primary lesion, you’re going to get referred to a medical oncologist.
And many oncologists in the general community may or may not be very familiar with the up-to-date management because it’s not very common. The common cancers out there are breast cancer, lung cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer. And general oncologists are very well-versed in how to manage those. I tell most patients you may not need to come to a big skin cancer referral center, but it may benefit you to come for an opinion and have a skin cancer oncologist work with your local doctor.
And I do this all the time. Folks will come in and say, “You’re in New York City, but I live out in New Jersey. And coming into the city is just such a hardship. Is there any way I can do this outside?” And many times, my answer is if you’re not going to be participating in a clinical trial which is being run at my institution, I am more than happy to talk to your oncologist and work with them.
And it’s a collaboration. Many of us in academia are not looking to steal patients. We’re just looking to provide patients with the highest quality standard of care and are very, very happy to work with anybody that will provide that care to the patient to make sure that the patient can also get that care in a non-stressful setting.
