Skin Cancer Awareness

May is Skin Cancer Awareness month and living in Texas, there can never be enough emphasis placed on this topic.   With baby boomers facing the repercussions from not being educated about sun damage in their youth to the “fear factor” some people feel about getting anything suspicious looked at—there is no such thing as too much awareness. It’s not as simple as “apply sunscreen” but it’s not as complicated as one might think either.

There are general categories of Skin Cancer:

1. Basic Cell Cancer: The most common and fortunately least aggressive skin cancer

2. Squamous Cell Cancer: Often a non-healing scaling patch that never heals.  More potential risk than Basic Cell Cancer bust easily treated.

3. Melanoma: This can kill you.  It is more frequent in blue-eyes, blonde type patients but can occur in anyone.  Any unusual pigmented skin lesion that exhibits multiple colors, irregular borders, spontaneous bleeding, or non-healing should be evaluated.