Diagnosis of Skin Cancer

Once you have identified the lesions and possible skin patches, you need to get tests immediately done for skin cancer. The correct diagnosis of skin cancer will happen on the basis of the results of these tests.

Some of the tests used to diagnose skin cancer are:

Physical Examination: A detailed physical examination is done in the beginning along with noting a detailed family history. This helps the doctor to rule out similar diseases.
Biopsy: Doctors will remove a small portion of the inflamed or infected skin cells and send those for testing. Some of the different kinds of biopsies are shave biopsy, punch biopsy, incisional and excisional biopsy. These biopsies are distinguished based on the kind of tool used to conduct the biopsy. If the cancer seems to have spread deeper, the doctor might even conduct a lymph node biopsy.
Imaging tests used are magnetic resonance imaging or MRI, computerized topography or CT, and positron emission tomography or PET.

Signs & Symptoms

Prognosis