(NewsUSA) - Fifty thousand people in the U.S. have had their skin cancer cured without going to hospitals or undergoing traditional Mohs surgery, avoiding that treatment’s pain, bleeding, surgical scarring and, often, need for follow-up reconstructive surgery.
The nation’s 50,000th case of curing common (nonmelanoma) skin cancer with GentleCure™, the non-surgical treatment using Image-Guided Superficial Radiation Therapy or Image-Guided SRT, occurred at Reading Dermatology, the private Pennsylvania practice of Jason Hendrix, DO.
The patient was Jeffrey Keating, D.P.M., a 74-year-old retired podiatrist from Birdsboro, Pennsylvania, whose lifelong habits of golfing, sailing and driving in his top-down convertible likely contributed to his history of skin cancer.
“I had Mohs surgery years earlier for a lesion on my calf,” Keating said, “but this time, with three lesions on my face, my doctor and I chose non-surgical GentleCure and the results were outstanding.”
With GentleCure, doctors treat nonmelanoma skin cancer (basal and squamous cell carcinomas) using ultrasound imaging to direct low-level X-ray energy to targeted areas of the skin, killing cancer cells without surgery. Research shows that the technology produces a 99.3 percent cure rate for early stage nonmelanoma skin cancer, making it just as effective as Mohs surgery, and treatments are covered by Medicare and most insurance plans.
Dr. Hendrix noted, "More than three million Americans are diagnosed with nonmelanoma skin cancer each year, making it the most common form of cancer. Sun exposure is the primary cause and year-round sun effects are cumulative over one's lifetime, so those who spend a lot of time outdoors plus seniors, those with light skin, users of tanning beds and people with family histories of skin cancer are especially susceptible. With all its advantages, GentleCure is the new non-invasive standard of care."
Patient Keating added, “As a physician myself, I know that it’s critically important for patients to understand all their treatment options. Having experienced Mohs surgery, the idea of no pain or scarring with GentleCure was very attractive. Actually seeing the cancer shrink and disappear on the ultrasound imaging screen was so reassuring. I have a friend who had Mohs surgery on a facial lesion, and he had a flap of skin cut from his scalp and stretched over the site of his excised lesion; that was not something I wanted to experience. Today, I am fully cured and could not be happier with the GentleCure process and results.”
For more information and to learn where Image-Guided SRT is available, visit GentleCure.com.