Skin Cancer
Regular exams of the skin by both you and your doctor increase the chance of finding skin cancer early. Checking your skin every month can help you find changes that should be reported to your doctor. Regular skin checks by a doctor are important for people who have already had skin cancer.
What is it?
If an area on the skin looks abnormal, a biopsy is usually done. The doctor will remove as much of the suspicious tissue as possible with a local excision. A pathologist then looks at the tissue under a microscope to check for cancer cells, to determine if the skin growth is benign (not cancer) or malignant (cancer), you may want to have the biopsy sample checked by a second pathologist.
Most melanomas in the skin can be seen by the naked eye. Usually, melanoma grows for a long time under the top layer of skin (the epidermis) but does not grow into the deeper layer of skin (the dermis). This allows time for skin cancer to be found early. Melanoma is easier to cure if it is found before it spreads.
Why?
Skin cancer screening tests are used because they have been shown to be helpful both in finding cancers early and decreasing the chance of dying from these cancers.