Skin Cancer

Introduction

Skin Cancer is the most common cancer now in the United States, with over one million new cases each year. Unlike other illnesses you can develop while travelling the choices you make that help skin cancer grow on your body will not affect you for many years if not decades. Skin cancer is caused by damage at the cellar level by UV radiation.

Any kind of tan or sunburn is cellar damage by UV radiation. Yes your skin will heal afterwards but that damage is accumulative and lasts for the rest of your life. Imagine every tan or much worse sunburn as being hit by a baseball bat lightly. At first it does very little damage but over time it can kill you.

Prevention

• Always use SPF 48 or higher sunscreen, especially if at the beach, on water, at high altitude and near the poles, like in Antarctica.
• Reapply sunscreen every 2 hours
• Wear protective clothing or sunscreen when outside between 10 am and 3 pm.
• Avoid activities like sunbathing
• Never use a tanning bed because they expose you to massive amount of UV radiation.
• Prevent sun burn at all costs, especially for younger children.

Pre-exposure Vaccinations

There is no vaccination for skin cancer, although if the proper care is taken most people can avoid skin cancer.

Symptoms and Treatment

Symptoms

The main symptoms are crabs or changes in the skin that never heal, ulcers in the skin, discoloration and changes in preexisting moles. Here is information on the three most common kinds of skin cancer:

• Basal Cell Carcinoma - Most of the times this cancer looks like a raised, smooth, pearly bump on a sun exposed area of skin such as the head, neck or shoulders. Sometimes blood vessel can be see inside the tumor, also crusting and bleeding inside the tumor frequently happens. Sometimes it is mistaken for a sore that does not heal.
• Squamous Cell Carcinoma - Is usually red, scaling and thickened patch on a sun exposed area of skin. If this cancer is not treated it can grow into a large mass.
• Melanomas - Look like brown to black lesions. The key thing to look for are a change in size, shape, color, elevation, new pain, itching, ulceration or bleeding of a mole. Or the appearance of a new mole during adulthood

Treatment

Most treatment methods involve removing the tumor from your skin. If found and removed quickly then risk for death is very low. Remember that UV radiation damage is accumulative so therefore it is very possible that another tumor can grow on or near the same spot of previous tumors and many skin cancer victims have to return every year in order to remove new tumors.