Skin Cancer Resource
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Skin cancer starts out as precancerous lesions of the skin. As they develop, they grow into skin cancer.
Skin cancer is very common.
It is said that about 40-50% of white individuals under the age of 65 will come down with skin cancer of some kind.
This is especially true of fair-skinned individuals. Among all Americans, 20% will have skin cancer.
Some skin cancer starts as actinic keratoses. They look like dry skin patches. They will turn into squamous cell skin cancer if they are not treated with skin cancer surgery or burning of the precancerous tissue.
According to the statistics on skin cancer, skin cancer is the most common type of cancer in the US.
About 3.5 million skin cancers are found in 2 million people throughout the US. This means that some people have more than one cancer on their skin. It is more than you’ll find in all the breast, lung, colon and prostate cancer in the US.
Basal cell carcinoma is the most common kind of skin cancer you can have. It occurs in about 2.8 million people. Basal cell carcinoma never travels to other body areas. It can look really disfiguring if it is allowed to get worse without treatment.
Squamous cell skin cancer is the second most common type of cancer of the skin. According to statistics on skin cancer, there are 700,000 cases of this type of cancer found in the US. Some cases of squamous cell skin cancer will travel to other body areas but this is rare.
The cost of treating these two types of cancer is over a billion a year. Most cases are due to sunlight exposure or exposure to UV light from tanning beds. The UV exposure occurs over the course of one’s lifetime.
A great deal of sun exposure happens from age 20-40 years.
This is when melanoma is found in a small skin area, usually within a mole. Most are caused by exposure to the sun or to UV radiation in a tanning bed. Cases of melanoma in situ are increasing. Some people believe this is due to the loss of the ozone layer of the atmosphere. The sun’s rays are stronger than ever before.
According to statistics on skin cancer, almost 69,000 cases of melanoma will be diagnosed this year. About 8600 of these people will die from their cancer.
Melanoma in situ is the only type of skin cancer that results in death of the individual if left untreated for long periods of time.
According to statistics on skin cancer, melanoma accounts for only 3% of all skin cancers but it causes more than 75% of all the deaths from skin cancer.
The mortality from melanoma increased by 33% since 1975 but the survival rate has increased remarkably. In fact, the survival rate has improved by 92% between 1996 and 2003.
This means that more than 20 Americans will die from melanoma each day or about one person per hour.
If a melanoma is detected early, the survival rate is 99%. If a person has advanced disease, the survival rate drops to only 15% . This makes it the most common type of skin cancer death in the world.
Melanoma is due to sun exposure or to UV exposure in tanning beds. If women tan, they have a higher chance of having melanoma before age 39 than they have a risk of getting breast cancer. Young adults aged 15-29 percent have a high rate of melanoma. It is the second most common kind of cancer in this age group.
One in fifty five persons will develop melanoma sometime during their life. Five or more sunburns in a person’s life will double the chances of getting melanoma later in life.
Most melanoma patients are over aged 50 and are men. Men have 5% of all cancers being melanoma, while women have a four percent incidence of melanoma among all cases of cancer.
Men receive most of their sun exposure over the age of 40. This puts them at a greater risk of developing skin cancer of all types. Rates of squamous cell skin cancer have increased in woman to a great degree. The rates of basal cell cancer in women have also increased dramatically.
Before aged 39, women have twice the incidence of melanoma. After age forty, men begin to catch up and exceed the incidence of skin cancers when compared to women. One in 39 men will develop melanoma skin cancer and one in 58 women develops melanoma skin cancer in their lifetime.
Indoor tanning can cause skin cancer of all types. Those who use tanning beds get as much as 12 times the dose of UVA when compared to regular sun exposure. Most tanning bed users are girls between the ages of 16-29. Exposure to tanning beds increases the risk of melanoma by 75 percent.
Tanning bed users are 2 ½ times more likely to get squamous cell skin cancer and are 1 ½ times more likely to get basal cell cancer of the skin.
Dr. Christine Traxler
4 12 2010
"This website is for all skin cancer patients, their families and friends. I want people to know that they can overcome this disease by learning what to do, where to go for great medical help, how to deal with insurance and all the other problems facing them.
I have worked with some great people to make this web site easy to understand and devoted to helping you. Please let me know if anything doesn't help you or if we can do something more that would be useful to you.
The most important factor in a person getting healthy is their personal determination and their will to be better. You have to summon that determination and then take the steps described here - we are here to help and support you."
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