Skin cancer awareness month kicks off starting today and what better way to raise awareness than to talk about why skin cancer isn’t just “removing a mole/lesion”.
Removing skin cancer below the neck is often what people think of and they see it as “not so bad”, but people who have had skin cancer at least once are 60% more likely to develop a second lesion within 10 years. This sometimes results in annual skin checks, more biopsies that may or may not be cancerous, but result is more scars.
Removing skin cancer on the face, ears or head is a lot more difficult because there’s a cosmetic component to be considered. The first question is often “is this going to leave a big scar on my face” and the answer is sometimes yes. In my experience, I see a lot of facial skin cancers be referred to a Mohs surgeon for the most cosmetically appealing removal. But, sometimes the entire nose needs to be removed, or parts of the ears, etc…
It should be noted that ALL removals result is a way larger scar than the lesion itself to ensure all of the cancer has been removed — sometimes, this results in re-excisions, sometimes multiple times, which results in larger and larger scars.
Skin cancer can also metastasized, as mentioned in the video. This means you develop skin cancer in another organ other than the skin. Once it spreads into other organs, then you start looking into additional treatments like radiation or chemotherapy.
While people may not think it’s “that big of a deal” when they’re young, I assure you, it isn’t just a little scar that you trade it in for, it’s a lot more serious.
