Treatment methods include surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy and medication.

There are several treatment options for penile cancer, depending on staging. They include surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and biological therapy. The most common treatment is one of five types of surgery:

- Wide local excision—the tumor and some surrounding healthy tissue are removed

- Microsurgery—surgery performed with a microscope is used to remove the tumor and as little healthy tissue as possible

- Laser surgery—laser light is used to burn or cut away cancerous cells

- Circumcision—cancerous foreskin is removed

- Amputation (penectomy)—a partial or total removal of the penis, and possibly the associated lymph nodes.

Radiation therapy is usually used adjuvantly with surgery to reduce the risk of recurrence. With earlier stages of penile cancer, a combination of topical chemotherapy and less invasive surgery may be used. More advanced stages of penile cancer usually require a combination of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy.

In addition to all the above, treatment of the underlying disease like brucellosis, is important to limit disease recurrence.

First-line chemotherapy regimens for advanced or metastatic TCC consists of gemcitabine and cisplatin) (GC) or a combination of methotrexate, vinblastine, adriamycin, and cisplatin (MVAC).

Taxanes or vinflunine have been used as second-line therapy (after progression on a platinum containing chemotherapy).

Immunotherapy such as pembrolizumab is often used as second-line therapy for metastatic urothelial carcinoma that has progressed despite treatment with GC or MVAC.

In May 2016 FDA granted accelerated approval to atezolizumab for locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma treatment after failure of cisplatin-based chemotherapy. The confirmatory trial (to convert the accelerated approval into a full approval) failed to achieve its primary endpoint of overall survival.

Superficial tumors (those not entering the muscle layer) can be "shaved off" using an electrocautery device attached to a cystoscope, which in that case is called a resectoscope. The procedure is called transurethral resection of bladder tumor—TURBT—and serves primarily for pathological staging. In case of non-muscle invasive bladder cancer the TURBT is in itself the treatment, but in case of muscle invasive cancer, the procedure is insufficient for final treatment.

Immunotherapy by intravesicular delivery of Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) is also used to treat and prevent the recurrence of superficial tumors. BCG is a vaccine against tuberculosis that is prepared from attenuated (weakened) live bovine tuberculosis bacillus, Mycobacterium bovis, that has lost its virulence in humans. BCG immunotherapy is effective in up to 2/3 of the cases at this stage, and in randomized trials has been shown to be superior to standard chemotherapy. The mechanism by which BCG prevents recurrence is unknown, but the presence of bacteria in the bladder may trigger a localized immune reaction which clears residual cancer cells.

Patients whose tumors recurred after treatment with BCG are more difficult to treat. Many physicians recommend cystectomy for these patients. This recommendation is in accordance with the official guidelines of the European Association of Urologists (EAU) and the American Urological Association (AUA) However, many patients refuse to undergo this life changing operation, and prefer to try novel conservative treatment options before opting to this last radical resort. Device assisted chemotherapy is one such group of novel technologies used to treat superficial bladder cancer. These technologies use different mechanisms to facilitate the absorption and action of a chemotherapy drug instilled directly into the bladder. Another technology - electromotive drug administration (EMDA) – uses an electric current to enhance drug absorption after surgical removal of the tumor. Another technology, thermotherapy, uses radio-frequency energy to directly heat the bladder wall, which together with chemotherapy shows a synergistic effect, enhancing each other's capacity to kill tumor cells. This technology was studied by different investigators.

Transitional cell carcinoma (TCC) can be very difficult to treat. Treatment for localized stage TCC is surgical resection of the tumor, but recurrence is common. Some patients are given mitomycin into the bladder either as a one-off dose in the immediate post-operative period (within 24 hrs) or a few weeks after the surgery as a six dose regimen.

Localized/early TCC can also be treated with infusions of BCG into the bladder. These are given weekly for either 6 weeks (induction course) or 3 weeks (maintenance/booster dose). Side effects include a small chance of developing systemic tuberculosis or the patient becoming sensitized to the BCG causing severe intolerance and a possible reduction in bladder volume due to scarring.

In patients with evidence of early muscular invasion, radical curative surgery in the form of a cysto-prostatectomy usually with lymph node sampling can also be performed. In such patients, a bowel loop is often used to create either a "neo-bladder" or an "ileal conduit" which act as a place for the storage of urine before it is evacuated from the body either via the urethra or a urostomy respectively.

In order to address the problem of micrometastatic disease which in itself has implications on longtime survival, new treatment options are dearly needed. Micrometastatic dissemination is often not treatable with only major surgery and the concept of neoadjuvant chemotherapy has evolved. In this patients first receive chemotherapy in 3 or 4 cycles, and after that proceed to major surgery. In a number of meta-analyses of randomised prospective trials worldwide, the results have shown survival benefits between 5–8% with this therapy, in a follow up time of 5 years.

There are different opinions on the best treatment of DCIS. Surgical removal, with or without additional radiation therapy or tamoxifen, is the recommended treatment for DCIS by the National Cancer Institute. Surgery may be either a breast-conserving lumpectomy or a mastectomy (complete or partial removal of the affected breast). If a lumpectomy is used it is often combined with radiation therapy. Tamoxifen may be used as hormonal therapy if the cells show estrogen receptor positivity. Chemotherapy is not needed for DCIS since the disease is noninvasive.

While surgery reduces the risk of subsequent cancer, many people never develop cancer even without treatment and there associated side effects. There is no evidence comparing surgery with watchful waiting and some feel watchful waiting may be a reasonable option in certain cases.

Staging and treatment are generally handled by an oncologist familiar with gynecologic cancer. Surgery is a mainstay of therapy depending on anatomical staging and is usually reserved for cancers that have not spread beyond the vulva. Surgery may involve a wide local excision, radical partial vulvectomy, or radical complete vulvectomy with removal of vulvar tissue, inguinal and femoral lymph nodes. In cases of early vulvar cancer, the surgery may be less extensive and consist of wide excision or a simple vulvectomy. Surgery is significantly more extensive when the cancer has spread to nearby organs such as the urethra, vagina, or rectum. Complications of surgery include wound infection, sexual dysfunction, edema and thrombosis, as well as lymphedema secondary to dissected lymph nodes.

Sentinel lymph node (SLN) dissection is the identification of the main lymph node(s) draining the tumor, with the aim of removing as few nodes as possible, decreasing the risk of adverse effects. Location of the sentinel node(s) may require the use of technetium(99m)-labeled nano-colloid, or a combination of technetium and 1% isosulfan blue dye, wherein the combination may reduce the number of women with "'missed"' groin node metastases compared with technetium only.

Radiation therapy may be used in more advanced vulvar cancer cases when disease has spread to the lymph nodes and/or pelvis. It may be performed before or after surgery. Chemotherapy is not usually used as primary treatment but may be used in advanced cases with spread to the bones, liver or lungs. It may also be given at a lower dose together with radiation therapy.

Women with vulvar cancer should have routine follow-up and exams with their oncologist, often every 3 months for the first 2–3 years after treatment. They should not have routine surveillance imaging to monitor the cancer unless new symptoms appear or tumor markers begin rising. Imaging without these indications is discouraged because it is unlikely to detect a recurrence or improve survival and is associated with its own side effects and financial costs.

Use of radiation therapy after lumpectomy provides equivalent survival rates to mastectomy, although there is a slightly higher risk of recurrent disease in the same breast in the form of further DCIS or invasive breast cancer. Systematic reviews (including a Cochrane review) indicate that the addition of radiation therapy to lumpectomy reduces recurrence of DCIS or later onset of invasive breast cancer in comparison with breast-conserving surgery alone, without affecting mortality. The Cochrane review did not find any evidence that the radiation therapy had any long-term toxic effects. While the authors caution that longer follow-up will be required before a definitive conclusion can be reached regarding long-term toxicity, they point out that ongoing technical improvements should further restrict radiation exposure in healthy tissues. They do recommend that comprehensive information on potential side effects is given to women who receive this treatment. The addition of radiation therapy to lumpectomy appears to reduce the risk of local recurrence to approximately 12%, of which approximately half will be DCIS and half will be invasive breast cancer; the risk of recurrence is 1% for women undergoing mastectomy.

Most hormone dependent cancers become resistant to treatment after one to three years and resume growth despite hormone therapy. Previously considered "hormone-refractory prostate cancer" or "androgen-independent prostate cancer", the term castration-resistant has replaced "hormone refractory" because while they are no longer responsive to castration treatment (reduction of available androgen/testosterone/DHT by chemical or surgical means), these cancers still show reliance upon hormones for androgen receptor activation.

The cancer chemotherapic docetaxel has been used as treatment for CRPC with a median survival benefit of 2 to 3 months. A second-line chemotherapy treatment is cabazitaxel. A combination of bevacizumab, docetaxel, thalidomide and prednisone appears effective in the treatment of CRPC.

The immunotherapy treatment with sipuleucel-T in CRPC increases survival by 4 months. The second line hormonal therapy abiraterone increases survival by 4.6 months when compared to placebo. Enzalutamide is another second line hormonal agent with a 5-month survival advantage over placebo. Both abiraterone and enzalutamide are currently being tested in clinical trials in those with CRPC who have not previously received chemotherapy.

Only a subset of people respond to androgen signaling blocking drugs and certain cells with characteristics resembling stem cells remain unaffected. Therefore, the desire to improve outcome of people with CRPC has resulted in the claims of increasing doses further or combination therapy with synergistic androgen signaling blocking agents. But even these combination will not affect stem-like cells that do not exhibit androgen signaling. It is possible that for further advances, a combination of androgen signaling blocking agent with stem-like cell directed differentiation therapy drug would prove ideal.

In breast cancer survivors, it is recommended to first consider non-hormonal options for menopausal effects, such as bisphosphonates or selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs) for osteoporosis, and vaginal estrogen for local symptoms. Observational studies of systemic hormone replacement therapy after breast cancer are generally reassuring. If hormone replacement is necessary after breast cancer, estrogen-only therapy or estrogen therapy with an intrauterine device with progestogen may be safer options than combined systemic therapy.

In breast cancer survivors, non-hormonal birth control methods should be used as first-line options. Progestogen-based methods such as depot medroxyprogesterone acetate, IUD with progestogen or progestogen only pills have a poorly investigated but possible increased risk of cancer recurrence, but may be used if positive effects outweigh this possible risk.

GCNIS is generally treated by radiation therapy and/or orchiectomy. Chemotherapy used for metastatic germ cell tumours may also eradicate GCNIS.

Palliative care is medical care which focuses on treatment of symptoms of serious illness, like cancer, and improving quality of life. One of the goals of treatment in palliative care is symptom control rather than a cure of the underlying cancer. Pain is common in metastatic prostate cancer, and cancer pain related to bone metastases can be treated with bisphosphonates, medications such as opioids, and palliative radiation therapy to known metastases. Spinal cord compression can occur with metastases to the spine and can be treated with steroids, surgery, or radiation therapy. Other symptoms that can be addressed through palliative care include fatigue, delirium, lymphedema in the scrotum or penis, nausea, vomiting, and weight loss.

Early radio-sensitive tumors are treated by radiotherapy along with irradiation of cervical nodes. The radiation uses high-energy X-rays, electron beams, or radioactive isotopes to destroy cancer cells.

Induction chemotherapy is the treatment adapted for shrinking the tonsil tumor. It is given prior to other treatments, hence, the term induction. After the therapy is completed, the patient is asked to rest and is evaluated over a period of time. Then the patient is given chemo-radiation therapy (a combination of chemotherapy and radiation) to completely destroy the tumor cells.

LCIS may be treated with close clinical follow-up and mammographic screening, tamoxifen or related hormone controlling drugs to reduce the risk of developing cancer, or bilateral prophylactic mastectomy. Some surgeons consider bilateral prophylactic mastectomy to be overly aggressive treatment except for certain high-risk cases.

10 to 20% of patients treated for anal cancer will develop distant metastatic disease following treatment. Metastatic or recurrent anal cancer is difficult to treat, and usually requires chemotherapy. Radiation is also employed to palliate specific locations of disease that may be causing symptoms. Chemotherapy commonly used is similar to other squamous cell epithelial neoplasms, such as platinum analogues, anthracyclines such as doxorubicin, and antimetabolites such as 5-FU and capecitabine. JD Hainsworth developed a protocol that includes Taxol and Carboplatinum along with 5-FU. Median survival rates for patients with distant metastases ranges from 8 to 34 months.

Laser therapy uses high-intensity light to treat cancer by shrinking or destroying tumors or precancerous growths. Lasers are most commonly used to treat superficial cancers that are on the surface of the body or the lining of internal organs. It is used to treat basal cell skin cancer and the very early stages of others like cervical, penile, vaginal, vulvar, and non-small cell lung cancer. It is often combined with other treatments, such as surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation therapy. Laser-induced interstitial thermotherapy (LITT), or interstitial laser photocoagulation, uses lasers to treat some cancers using hyperthermia, which uses heat to shrink tumors by damaging or killing cancer cells. Laser are more precise than surgery and cause less damage, pain, bleeding, swelling, and scarring. A disadvantage is surgeons must have specialized training. It may be more expensive than other treatments.

Localised disease (carcinoma-in-situ) and the precursor condition, anal intraepithelial neoplasia (anal dysplasia or AIN) can be ablated with minimally invasive methods such as Infrared Photocoagulation.

Previously, anal cancer was treated with surgery, and in early-stage disease (i.e., localised cancer of the anus without metastasis to the inguinal lymph nodes), surgery is often curative. The difficulty with surgery has been the necessity of removing the internal and external anal sphincter, with concomitant fecal incontinence. For this reason, many patients with anal cancer have required permanent colostomies.

Current gold-standard therapy is chemotherapy and radiation treatment to reduce the necessity of debilitating surgery. This "combined modality" approach has led to the increased preservation of an intact anal sphincter, and therefore improved quality of life after definitive treatment. Survival and cure rates are excellent, and many patients are left with a functional sphincter. Some patients have fecal incontinence after combined chemotherapy and radiation. Biopsies to document disease regression after chemotherapy and radiation were commonly advised, but are not as frequent any longer. Current chemotherapy consists of continuous infusion 5-FU over four days with bolus mitomycin given concurrently with radiation. 5-FU and cisplatin are recommended for metastatic anal cancer.

A variety of therapies using immunotherapy, stimulating or helping the immune system to fight cancer, have come into use since 1997. Approaches include antibodies, checkpoint therapy and adoptive cell transfer.

Treatment of invasive carcinoma of no special type (NST) depends on the size of the mass (size of the tumor measured in its longest direction):

- <4 cm mass: surgery to remove the main tumor mass and to sample the lymph nodes in the axilla. The stage of the tumor is ascertained after this first surgery. Adjuvant therapy (i.e., treatment after surgery) may include a combination of chemotherapy, radiotherapy, hormonal therapy (e.g., tamoxifen) and/or targeted therapy (e.g., trastuzumab). More surgery is occasionally needed to complete the removal of the initial tumor or to remove recurrences.

- 4 cm or larger mass: modified (a less aggressive form of radical mastectomy) radical mastectomy (because any malignant mass in excess of 4 cm in size exceeds the criteria for a lumpectomy) along with sampling of the lymph nodes in the axilla.

The treatment options offered to an individual patient are determined by the form, stage and location of the cancer, and also by the age, history of prior disease and general health of the patient. Not all patients are treated the same way.

Treatment for CIN 1, which is mild dysplasia, is not recommended if it lasts fewer than 2 years. Usually when a biopsy detects CIN 1 the woman has an HPV infection which may clear on its own within 12 months, and thus it is instead followed for later testing rather than treated.

Treatment for higher grade CIN involves removal or destruction of the neoplastic cervical cells by cryocautery, electrocautery, laser cautery, loop electrical excision procedure (LEEP), or cervical conization. Therapeutic vaccines are currently undergoing clinical trials. The lifetime recurrence rate of CIN is about 20%, but it isn't clear what proportion of these cases are new infections rather than recurrences of the original infection.

Surgical treatment of CIN lesions is associated with an increased risk of infertility or subfertility, with an odds ratio of approximately 2 according to a case-control study.

The treatment of CIN during pregnancy increases the risk of premature birth.

Radiation therapy can be delivered either as external beam radiotherapy or as brachytherapy (internal radiotherapy). Although radiotherapy is generally used in older patients who are not candidates for surgery, it is also used in cases where surgical excision will be disfiguring or difficult to reconstruct (especially on the tip of the nose, and the nostril rims). Radiation treatment often takes as few as 5 visits to as many as 25 visits. Usually, the more visits scheduled for therapy, the less complication or damage is done to the normal tissue supporting the tumor. Radiotherapy can also be useful if surgical excision has been done incompletely or if the pathology report following surgery suggests a high risk of recurrence, for example if nerve involvement has been demonstrated. Cure rate can be as high as 95% for small tumor, or as low as 80% for large tumors. Usually, recurrent tumors after radiation are treated with surgery, and not with radiation. Further radiation treatment will further damage normal tissue, and the tumor might be resistant to further radiation. Radiation therapy may be contraindicated for treatment of nevoid basal-cell carcinoma syndrome. The 2008 study reported that radiation therapy is a good treatment for primary BCCs and recurrent BCCs, but not for BCCs that have recurred following previous radiation treatment.

Immunotherapy research suggests that treatment using "Euphorbia peplus", a common garden weed, may be effective. Australian biopharmaceutical company Peplin is developing this as topical treatment for BCC. Imiquimod is an immunotherapy but is listed here under chemotherapy.