Curaderm Feedback

If you’ve used Curaderm, please help others by sharing your experience with side effects. What would you tell your best friend about this product? Please remember that we do not give medical advice. That is for your local health care provider, who is familiar with your medical history.

2nd lesion
Date: 3/30/2013
Hello I am currently using Curaderm on a 2nd lesion. The first was on my temple and took about 3 months to go through the process and heal. I recently realised I had unconsciously applying makeup to another permanent spot next to my noise and suspected another small lesion so applied Curaderm, I was shocked to discover yet another suspect area and now on day 10 I have unearthed a large lesion under that innocent looking spot.

My mother had a large basal cell carcinoma removed with Mohs’ surgery in the exact same place 6 months ago and had plastic surgery after, I was so shocked by her face that I started to look more closely at my own skin and discovered I had some lesions. So far i’ve been satisfied with Curaderm and though it may leave a scar I don’t want to end up having the same deep lesion that my Mother had. My Dad also had a lesion but used Imiquimod, after watching ‘Dr’s are dangerous’ I definately wound’t personally touch that stuff.
Kirsty

First hand experience with Curaderm
Date: 4/13/2006
I’m wondering why there are no independent reviews of curaderm available for the public to read, if it’s true there were so many clinical trials done. All that’s out there has been written by Dr. Bill Cham.

I tried curaderm a year ago for a biopsy-confirmed BCC about 1/4 inch in diameter, located under my eye, on the margin between the firm cheek skin and the delicate eye skin (edge of the bone). I don’t have allergies to eggplant or aspirin. I used it for 70 days, and only missed a small number of applications due to the pain being unbearable, and due to the need for some tissue recovery in order to be able to tolerate continued treatment.

I found that if it was covered with tape, the reaction was more severe – if I left it open for a while after applying it, then covered it, the intensity was a bit less. Initially the area surrounding my entire eye swelled up and reddened, so my eye was partially shut. This reaction, to a lesser degree, came & went throughout the treatment, but more in response to it being covered.

I talked with Bruno at curaderm once, but he acted very weird and suspicious of me, and not professional. I felt like there was no real source of support, and my medical doctor didn’t know anything about it (I gave him the website), but I bravely/foolishly forged ahead anyway. The degree of strong red inflammation was extreme, even in the non-treated skin surrounding the site. The pain was severe for a period of time after each application, so much I sounded like I was doing breathing for childbirth to avoid crying out, and I have a high pain tolerance.

I had to carefully hold tissue on my eye to absorb the tears for a while with each application, because the pain and fume-like irritation caused my eyes to stream and wash off the cream. When it ran down my face, it burned the non-cancerous skin too. As it ate away at the BCC, yellow serum oozed out, even from under the tape, and carried traces of the cream with it, which also burned the non-cancerous skin. The deeper it corroded the BCC, the worse the pain became, until it was intolerable to re-apply, so I had to take breaks for a day sometimes, but I still kept it moist so it wouldn’t dry out.

I have to work with the public, and can’t afford to take time off work, so that was a big problem. Finally after 70 days, it wasn’t filling in with new skin as they describe, rather the corrosion seemed to spread in irregular lines, so I started having waking-nightmares that tentacles of cancer had spread all through my face. I became worried about damage or scarring, and I just couldn’t handle it anymore. So I quit.

I also had a spot on the top of my foot which appeared similar in shape, but very shallow and subtle compared to the one on my face, barely visible without side-angle lighting. It was not confirmed by biopsy, because with the mess on my face I was afraid to go back to the doctor who was pressuring me to have surgery. I treated my foot more assertively than my face, and kept it covered at all times. The skin appeared to be rotting away, and turned greyish-white, swollen and water-logged, and obviously dead. It initially sloughed off in micro-bits when it was washed between applications, then started freely peeling off in what seemed to be thick layers, though the dead skin was swollen and waterlogged so it probably appeared to be thicker layers than what it really was. This process just kept going and going, to the point where I was waiting to see tendons and bones soon – because it wasn’t on my face, it was fascinating in a very creepy way, but I felt like I was in a nightmare and just wanted the cancer gone.

A few times when the tape was removed, it painfully took away layers of skin with it. Because the information available said it only kills cancer cells, not normal cells, I persisted even though it had become very questionable. This area also had a couple corroded lines that went out toward my toes, so again I felt like it was a living nightmare, a real-life horror show, with tentacles of cancer reaching far out from the original site (honestly I’m very strong and not overly-imaginative). But I now think that it was a couple wrinkles in the tape that allowed the cream to creep out in a line under the tape-wrinkle. However it reached the point where I was almost screaming in pain at each application, and it then reached a further point where the pain persisted 24 hours a day and I couldn’t walk without great caution and a limp.

At that point I had no choice but to stop treatment – it was ridiculously extreme and I felt it had reached a dangerous point for potential serious infection due to the gaping raw area on my foot. I never did know if the spot on my foot was a BCC, or if the curaderm corroded normal tissue. It took over 2 months for the deep red on my face to disappear, and even then the color was different.

It took longer for the hollow in my facial-skin to fill most of the way in – it never completely went away though it was partly from the biopsy. For probably half a year, there were sudden tiny sharp stabbing pains in the area, sometimes deep in the skin, and sometimes itching as well. My foot had first a dark red area, then a brown area, that lasted for many months before it faded. It took a long time for the pain to go away completely, and even now it is more sensitive than the rest of my foot. It had less of the tiny stabbing needles, but more overall tenderness and itching.

When I stopped using it, I felt that the treatment had not completely eliminated the root of the cancer, but I just couldn’t do it anymore. I always planned to go at it again after a break, but I never did. Now a year later, the BCC on my face has returned, but this time the diameter is 50% wider what it was before, and in the last week a hollow has developed in the middle. My foot has started itching again too. So now I’m here on this site because I’m searching the internet, both medical and non-medical sites, hoping for a non-surgical option that actually works. All the options seem dismal mainly because of the rates of re-occurance or the trauma involved.

I have to work with people too. So I’ve been checking for updates on, or improvements in, curaderm, wondering about the sanity of trying it again, or using it in combination/follow-up to photodynamic therapy (which has a high recurrance rate too)if I’m even a candidate for PDT because of the possible depth. But after a year, there still aren’t any independent reviews or information about it – the only thing out there has been written by Bill Cham, or are people quoting him. Where are the reports from the hospitals and clinical trials that were supposedly done? If you know of anything that may be of help or be informative, please let me know. Thanks in advance. I hope this is helpful for some people, even though it isn’t very pretty. Sorry it’s so long, but there was a lot to the experience.

C.

AskDocWeb: Well you certainly are not Dr. Bill Cham and you have given an independent review, which is most helpful for others considering Curaderm. Thank you!

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