Skin cancer is a disease in which cancer, or malignant, cells
are found in the outer layers of your skin. Your skin protects your
body against heat, light, infection, and injury. It also stores water,
fat, and vitamin D. Your skin consists of an outer layer called the
epidermis, and an inner layer called the dermis.
The healthiness of your skin depends on three key elements:
heredity, sunburn/sunlight, and environment, which includes things
like elevation, latitude, and cloud cover. Unfortunately, the
environment component is deteriorating, because the level of UV
light is higher than it was 100 years ago due to a reduction of the
ozone layer. If they are all against your favor, then you will be
extremely susceptible to skin cancer.
There are four main types of skin cancer, which are malignant
melanoma, actinic keratosis, basal cell, and squamos cell. Some
less common ones are cutaneous T-cell lymphoma(cancer of lymph
system), Kaposi's sarcoma, and cancers that begin in other parts of
the body also may spread to the skin, or metastasize. These can
occur anywhere on the body(in terms of skin), but most common in
places most exposed to sunlight like your face, neck, hands, and
arms. AIDS, which disables your immune system, makes skin cancer
Skin cancers are easily detected clinically and are often cured
by excisional biopsy. When neglected, they may be very deforming
and may cause death. Melanoma, the rarest form of skin cancer, is
responsible for about 75% of all deaths from skin cancer. In fact, 1
out of 7 Americans are diagnosed each year with some form of the
disease. That's over one million. In 2000, about 47,700 individuals
were predicted to develop melanoma and nearly 7,700 of those to
die. Incidence increased 126% between 1973 and 1995, which is a
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