Skin Cancer

Symptoms of Skin Cancer

Common symptoms of skin cancer incorporate:

·         Evolving – You can identify that the mole is changing shape, color, or size.

·         Diameter – The spot is around a pencil eraser’s size, or larger than one-quarter inch.

·         Color – The spot has different colors, such as red, blue, black, pink, or white.

·         Border – The skin lesions have uneven, ragged edges.

·         Asymmetry – Skin mole or lesions’ two halves are not the same or even.

·         Skin Lesions – An unusual development, new mold, dark spot, scaly patch, sore, or bump grows and doesn’t disappear.

Types of Skin Cancer

Two primary skin mass types exist, melanoma and keratinocyte carcinoma. Nevertheless, some other skin lesions are pondered part of a larger skin cancer umbrella. They can be cancerous but not all of them are necessarily skin cancer.

1. Basal Cell Carcinoma – The most common skin cancer type, basal cell carcinoma attributes 90% of all skin cancer cases. They are gradually developing masses that maximum time seen on the neck or head.

2. Actinic Keratosis – These pink or red skin patches are not cancerous, but you can consider them a type of pre-cancer. If you don’t treat them, they may grow into squamous cell carcinoma.

3. Melanoma – This skin cancer type is very unusual, but this is the most dangerous among all. Melanoma makes up only 1% of skin cancers, but it leads to maximum deaths related to skin cancers every year. It produces in the melanocytes, the skin cells that produce pigment.

4. Squamous cell carcinoma – This skin cancer type grows in your skin’s outer layers and it is more threatening than basal cell carcinoma. It may appear as scaly, red lesions on your skin.

Stages of Skin Cancer

To decide the severity or stage of skin cancer, the doctor factors in how big the tumor is, whether it has spread to your lymph nodes or other body parts. Skin cancer is distributed into 2 major groups for staging: Melanoma and Non-melanoma skin cancer.

Melanoma stages incorporate:

·         Stage 0 – This non-invasive kind of skin cancer hasn’t invaded under the epidermis.

·         Stage I – Cancer may have spread to the dermis, the skin's second layer, but it is still small.

·         Stage II – Cancer hasn’t spread beyond the original tumor site, but it is thicker, larger and may have other symptoms or signs. These incorporate flaking, bleeding or scaling.

·         Stage III – The Cancer has metastasized or spread to nearby tissue or skin or your lymph nodes.

·         Stage IV – Being the most developed stage of melanoma, Stage IV indicates cancer has spread beyond the primary tumor and is seen in organs, lymph nodes, or tissue apart from the original site.

Non-melanoma skin cancers incorporate Squamous and Basal cell cancers. Its stages include:

·         Stage 0 – The abnormal cells haven’t spread above the epidermis.

·         Stage I – Cancer may have spread to the dermis, but it’s not larger than 2cms.

·         Stage II – The tumor is larger in size than 2cms, but it hasn’t spread to lymph nodes or nearby sites.

·         Stage III – From the primary tumor, cancer has spread to nearby bone or tissue, and it’s larger than 3cms.

·         Stage IV – Cancer has spread beyond the primary tumor site to bone or tissue and lymph nodes. Moreover, the tumor is larger than 3cms.