Successful treatment of squamous cell carcinoma of the lip with electron beam therapy: a symphony of medicine and physics

Description

A female aged 57 years, a professional flautist by occupation presented with a history of non-healing 'pimple' on her left upper lip, which was gradually increasing in size over 6 months. There was history of occasional yellowish discharge and bleeding, provoked by her attempts to remove it. On examination, there was a firm non-tender swelling with fine, white crusting, measuring 5 mm at its widest along with surrounding induration of 1 cm (figure 1A), without involvement of the inner mucosa of lip.

Figure 1

Pretreatment and post-treatment images. (A) The visible lesion (black arrow) was surrounded by a 1 cm circumferential region of induration (white arrow) appreciated on palpation. These were marked on patients skin and a 2 cm margin (blue arrow) was also marked to serve as the planning target volume. Care was taken to exclude the nasal ala from this volume. To ensure reproducibility a custom...

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