Radiation therapy for nonmelanoma skin carcinomas

Radiation therapy has an important role in the treatment of appropriately selected nonmelanoma skin carcinomas. The main advantage of treating skin carcinomas with irradiation is that normal tissue adjacent to the tumor is preserved. Tissue preservation is particularly important for tumors of the nose, ear, and periorbital region, where obtaining adequate surgical margins can sometimes lead to significant functional loss or cosmetic deformity. Radiotherapy also has an important role in the postoperative setting for patients with tumor-involved surgical margins, perineural invasion, metastatic adenopathy, and neuroendocrine carcinoma of the skin (Merkel cell carcinoma).