Soft Tissue & Skin Cancer Surgery

For soft tissue cancers (sarcomas) and skin cancer, your doctors at OU Health’s nationally recognized Stephenson Cancer Center may recommend surgery as the cure. The type of surgery you receive depends on your specific type of cancer.

Personalized Sarcoma & Skin Cancer Treatment

At Stephenson Cancer Center, Oklahoma’s only NCI-Designated Cancer Center, you’ll work with surgical oncologists who bring their extensive training and experience gained at some of the nation’s leading cancer centers to focus on your particular situation.

Soft Tissue & Skin Cancer Surgery

Because different skin and soft tissue cancers such as sarcomas, melanomas and squamous cell cancers behave differently, proper surgical treatment for each type of cancer requires expertise and careful planning, which also may involve chemotherapy, radiation therapy or immunotherapy. That’s why you benefit from working with the surgical oncologists at Stephenson Cancer Center.

Depending on the type of cancer you have and how advanced it is at the time of diagnosis, you and your OU Health team may choose from several options.

• Wide local excision – Removes tumor and small amount of surrounding healthy cancer-free tissue to ensure no cancer remains behind
• Limb-sparing surgery – Used for sarcomas of arms and legs to avoid amputation; removes entire tumor while sparing critical blood vessels and nerves needed for limb to function; may require radiation therapy or chemotherapy to shrink tumor before surgery
• Amputation – Removes a limb when required, in rare cases, to stop skin or soft tissue cancers of arms and legs from spreading to vital organs
• Abdominal surgery – Removes challenging types of soft tissue cancers found within the abdomen that may invade other organs that also need to be removed; requires high-level surgical expertise and planning for successful treatment

Learn more about services for soft tissue cancers at Stephenson Cancer Center, including clinical trials and personal attention for your journey, as well as surgical oncology and additional surgery services at OU Health.

Mohs Micrographic Surgery for Skin Cancer

When you choose OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center for your skin cancer care, especially cancers on the face or other cosmetically sensitive areas, you can take advantage of Mohs micrographic surgery for some cancer types such as basal cell, squamous cell and others,

Using a microscope to examine everything during the procedure, your Mohs surgeon removes all cancer cells layer by layer while sparing as much surrounding tissue as possible. This innovative technique, performed by specially trained physicians, often can take place in an office-based setting.

Learn more about Mohs micrographic surgery and skin cancer care at OU Health.

Your Expert Soft Tissue & Skin Cancer Surgery Team

Your sarcoma and skin cancer surgery team at Stephenson Cancer Center includes board-certified and fellowship-trained surgeons who lead the nation in setting and monitoring professional quality standards for cancer care while they also collaborate with you and specialists from many other healthcare disciplines to provide the best possible outcomes for your specific situation.

You’ll work with expert surgical oncologists who look forward to their time with you and your family during the treatment process and take care to address your nutritional, emotional and social needs, as well as your physical health.