Treatment.
—Excision is, of course, the best method of treatment unless a disfiguring scar be feared. This can usually be prevented by proper plastic methods. When excision seems inadvisable electrolysis is the next best method of attack. No matter how vascular may be the lesion itself, the vessels a short distance from the margin of these growths are rarely dilated, and hemorrhage is not a feature which need deter one from radical treatment.
Lymphangioma.
—This has also been described in the chapter on Tumors. A circumscribed form is occasionally found in or beneath the skin. It occurs early in life, constitutes a more or less sessile tumor, which collapses on pressure, fills slowly, its surface being often irregular, warty, or horny. Should the surface be injured lymph will escape rather than blood. An extended form of it constitutes one kind of elephantiasis. (See chapter on [Lymphatics].) Any septic infection of a growth of this character is likely to result seriously and at once.
Treatment.
—The best treatment is excision under thorough aseptic precautions; next to this is destruction with the cautery, which will lead to resulting sloughing and cicatrization.
Malignant Disease.
—All forms of cancer may appear, primarily, in or upon the skin. From the ordinary surface epithelium springs epithelioma; from the glandular elements possibly round-cell carcinoma; and from the mesodermic elements any of the radical varieties of sarcoma, while endothelioma is less common.
Epithelioma.
—This is a frequent infection of the skin, which may arise primarily as an original lesion, usually following surface irritation, or secondarily, either as the extension of similar disease from other parts or of degeneration of previously innocent epithelial tumors. Epithelial outgrowth, so long as it be an outgrowth, and do not transgress the limits of the basement membrane, is essentially innocent in character; but so soon as growth in the downward direction begins we have the beginning of a skin cancer, which may proceed to fatal extent if not promptly recognized and properly treated. These growths vary very much in rapidity and malignancy. Occurring upon surfaces which are kept constantly moist and warm they develop more rapidly, as upon the tongue, within the vulva, rectum, etc. The slowest form of growth of this kind is the so-called rodent ulcer. Epithelioma which begins in or upon the skin or mucous membrane tends to spread to and involve everything in its neighborhood; even bone and cartilage succumb to its ravages, and, becoming involved, lose all their characteristics and melt away in the surrounding ulcer. This produces in the course of time hideous and serious developments. No tissue is exempt from its ravages, and yet life may be prolonged for many years, even when the face is almost entirely eaten away. Epithelioma and rodent ulcer have been described in the chapter on Tumors.