Skin cancer | symptoms and signs of early onset

Skin cancer: symptoms and signs of early onset

Among all oncological diseases, skin cancer is perhaps the most frivolous of all. Not all people know how dangerous it can be. And very often, skin cancer can be recognized at early stages, when it is very easy to cure. Therefore, when you see unusual skin formations on your skin, you need to go straight to the doctor. But in which cases is there a cause for concern, and in which - not?

There are many varieties of malignant skin formations, and all of them differ significantly in nature as well as in the severity of the disease. Some skin cancers are very rare or occur in certain categories of the population, and others may be affected by people of different genders and ages.

Unlike some other oncological diseases that can develop underground in the early stages without any special symptoms, skin cancer is usually easy to see in the early stages. After all, the skin surface is almost always available for visual review. This means that a person is able to pay attention to the degenerated tissue.

Risk factors

Why does cancer develop, particularly on the skin? Medicine does not have an unambiguous answer to this question. Undoubtedly, there is not one unfavorable factor that plays a role here, but their totality at once. Scientists believe that the following circumstances contribute most to the emergence of tumors:

1. Smoking;
2. Unhealthy lifestyle;
3. Non-observance of personal hygiene;
4. unhealthy diet, consumption of large amounts of potentially carcinogenic products and insufficient vitamins and fiber in the diet;
5. Injuries and wounds to the skin surface;
6. hereditary factors;
7. Racial differences;
8. prolonged exposure to the sun;
9. frequent use of solariums;
10. exposure to ionizing radiation;
11. prolonged contact with potentially carcinogenic substances (soot, fuel oil, benzene, coal tar, oil, etc.);
12. Outdoor work;
13. Older age (over 50 years of age);
14. prolonged administration of corticosteroids and immunosuppressants;
15. low immunity;
16. High incidence of other skin pathologies;
17. prolonged exposure to high fever;
18. precancerous skin conditions (optional and obligate);
19. systemic lupus erythematosus erythematosus;
20. AIDS;
21. Chemotherapy and radiation therapy of other oncological diseases;
22. changes in hormonal background (including during pregnancy);

Different skin cancers may have different weights for different types of skin cancers. For example, some can occur almost exclusively in old age. However, in one way or another, almost all skin cancers are mostly observed in adulthood. Cases of children's disease are relatively rare. The frequency of other types of malignant tumors varies greatly depending on racial and sexual factors.

What does skin cancer look like
Different types of skin cancer can look different. Not event what kind of epidermisor{skin} cancer a person has, the symptoms of the disease may be alike:

1. Burning and itching,
2. soreness,
3. bleeding,
4. red border around the tumor.

Phenomena such as darkening of the previously light skin, long ulceration of the surface, increase and soreness of the lymph nodes near the place of neoplasms, compaction of the skin area and its elevation over the surface should also be alarming. Painful skin formations may indicate the germination of the tumor in the deep, subcutaneous tissue layers or the addition of secondary inflammatory processes.

What if suspicious signs are found? First of all, you should never postpone a doctor's visit. After all, the earlier the treatment is started, the better the chances of a successful outcome.

Number one signs of skin cancer in body [First stage]:
Malignant skin neoplasms are diverse. Their main groups:

1. Non-melanoma tumors - basal cell and flat cell skin cancer - develop from epithelial skin cells;
2. melanoma;
3. Tumors of skin appendages;
4. other neoplasms.
5. Lets We Explain the first signs of epidermis cancer That is malignant tumors.

Basal-cell skin cancer
Basal-cell skin cancer (synonyms - basalium, basal cell carcinoma, basal cellular cancer of Krompecher) develops from cells of basal layer of skin epithelium.

This type of skin cancer is most common (in about 75% of cases). However, in most cases, only elderly people (over 60 years of age) get it. Of all skin cancers, basalium has the slowest development and the most favorable prognosis. Basalium is usually found on the skin of the face, most often on the following surfaces:

1. The side of the nose bridge,
2. the brow area,
3. nose wings,
4. the temple,
5. upper lip,
6. nasolabial fold,

Also, basalioma can occur on the ears and neck. Growing up to a large size, it can germinate through the skin and tissue below and cause damage. Due to the fact that basalioma grows slowly, patients do not treat it immediately to a doctor.

Basallioma usually occurs suddenly, without any precursors of precancerous tumors, as opposed to flat cell skin cancer. The diameter of the tumor at the beginning stage is usually 2 cm, it is easily traumatized and bleeds.

Unlike other types of skin tumors, basalium rarely metastases. In principle, this type of tumor is a middle ground between benign and malignant tumors. However, in terms of histological signs, it is still a malignant tumor. The prognosis for this category of skin tumors is favorable.

Dangerous in this type of skin cancer are cases where the localization of the pathology occurs around the eyes, in the folds above the lip, around the outer ear canal, in the posterior furrow of the auricle. In these places, the tumor germinates deeply, damaging bone tissue, muscles, brain.

However, with early detection, timely treatment and removal of the tumor the patient can get rid of this disease without consequences.

There are about 20 types of malignant cells of basalium skin cancer. The most common are such clinical forms:

1. nodal;
2. superficial;
3. Scleroderma-like;
4. cystic;
5. fibroepithelial.

Symptoms and symptoms of each type of basal cancer differ. And more often than not, the forms are combined in one patient. The diagnosis requires a clinical examination by a specialist doctor.

Nodular (nodular, solid) basalioma

Appears on the skin of the head, neck. This skin cancer is initially characterized by the appearance of dense nodules of small size (2 - 5 mm), which gradually merge with each other. The tumour grows slowly and then decomposes to form a deep ulcer with roller-shaped edges covered with purulent-necrotic crust.

Tumor pigment cells can be translucent or slightly brown to black.

Surface basallioma

Usually located on the torso, arms and legs. Looks like a rounded pink spot. At the initial stage it peels off, and when it develops on its surface there are papillomas, ulcerations.

This skin cancer is not aggressive and is the most favorable according to the forecast: the lesion of the skin develops very slowly, for decades.

Scleroderma-like (flat, morpho-like, sclerosing) basalioma

Rare but aggressive skin cancer. The tumor is located deep in the skin layers and is much larger in volume than the external signs on the surface. There are many cases of recurrence of the disease.

Most of the symptoms of skin cancer of this type are found on the head and neck. A pale pink plaque with raised edges and a mother-of-pearl hue appears on the skin at an early stage. In the late stages of development, the focus looks like an indented scar or patch.

Cystic basallioma

The form is called cystic because it looks like a translucent nodule (like a cyst) on the skin. It is detected by accident if a biopsy is performed.

Fibroepithelial basallioma (Pincus fibroepithelioma)

Signs of skin cancer of this type are usually found on the lower back. Looks like a fibrous polyp on a flat or hemispherical leg. It is a rare tumor formation. It has a favorable prognosis.

Flat cell cancer

Flat cell skin cancer (synonyms - squamous cell carcinoma, flat cell epithelioma, epidermoid cancer, spino-cellular cancer) develops from skin keratinocytes.

This type of skin cancer is the third most common after basallioma and melanoma. It can affect people of all ages, adults and the elderly, both men and women.

Outwardly, a tumor with squamous cell cancer resembles a small ulcer, sometimes bleeding. Very often the tumor is confused with the manifestation of some inflammatory skin diseases, dermatitis, burns. However, in contrast to these formations, the tumor does not decrease in size and grows.

This formation may be in different parts of the body, but most often found at the junction of different skin surfaces - the corners of the eyes, mouth, lips, mucous membranes, genitals (Keyre's disease), etc. Over time, the tumor may form metastases. However, they are most often observed on the skin near the primary tumor on the skin, or in the lymph nodes. In facial tumours, lymphatic damage is most common. Signs of lymph node lesions are the increase in size, mobility and painfulness of the lymph nodes. Later on, they may decompose with simultaneous ulceration of the nearest skin. Metastases affect distant organs only in neglected cases.

The tumor is usually characterized by slow development, which increases the chances that it can be recognized and treated in a timely manner. However, the survival rate of patients is low at a late stage of the disease.

Flat-celled skin cancer in its initial stages is the formation of a red seal, ulcer or cone with a diameter of about 2 cm. This formation can be easily traumatized. A variety of factors can be used as a trigger to start its development, particularly the intense exposure of the skin to sunlight. At the site of formation there may be a healthy area of the skin, and scars from burns, chronic ulcer, inflammation.

Flat cell cancer is easily treatable at an early stage. Surgical methods, radiation therapy and chemotherapy are used for this purpose. However, chemotherapy in most cases is auxiliary.

Highly differentiated skin cancer can be mentioned as a type of squamous skin cancer. Pathological formations such as actinic keratosis and Bowen's disease are the precursors of this disease.

When skin cancer is highly differentiated, the tumor grows for a long time. It has a high density, horny growths and crust on the surface. However, this skin tumor is similar to warts, solar keratoses, which can make it difficult to diagnose the disease.

Low-differentiated squamous cell cancer, in contrast to highly differentiated cancer, has a high growth rate and aggressive flow. It is a mild, bump- or ulcer-like formation. It can bleed or hurt.

Five-year survival rate at timely removal of cancer cells is more than 50%, but at formation of metastases it decreases to 30%.

Melanoma

This tumor develops on the basis of pigmented skin cells - melanocytes. This type of cancer is relatively rare compared to basalium (15% of all cases of skin cancer). However, it still ranks second after it, and if we take all cancers, more than 1% of them are melanoma. Most often women suffer from the disease, although the proportion of men who are ill is quite high. There is also a sharp increase in the likelihood of this type of skin cancer in people after 50 years of age.

Despite the relative low probability of development of this type of cancer, it is among the most aggressive types of skin cancer, and cancer in general. For reasons that are not quite clear to science, the body's immune system reacts very little to melanoma, allowing the tumor to develop quite quickly - within weeks, and sometimes even a few days the tumor passes from cancer in its initial stage to a stage that is dangerous to life. Also, the tumor is characterized by rapid metastasis in the early stages, and the metastases can penetrate not only into the neighboring areas of the tumor skin, but also in the lymph nodes, as well as in the distant organs from the tumor.

The prognosis of this type of tumor is extremely unfavorable. Just on the one Place [stage] of the sickness radical finished can lead to a restore. Also, the tumor tends to sprout into the skin, going beyond its borders and penetrating into other tissues - muscles and cartilage. Melanoma mortality is about 80% of all skin cancer deaths.

Outwardly, melanoma looks like a small spot of uneven shape just a few millimeters wide. Signs that make it possible to identify a tumor at an early stage are its painfulness and bleeding. The color of the tumor is usually black or dark blue, less often red. It may contain inclusions of another color, such as white. The tumour is also slightly protruding from the skin surface and is often ulcerated. Sometimes there is a melanoma with a white surface, such tumors are particularly difficult to diagnose at an early stage.

The size of a tumor can vary from 2 mm to several cm. A characteristic symptom for identifying malignancy is rather its shape, color and accompanying symptoms - soreness, bleeding.

Often the tumor is formed on a completely clean area of the skin. However, usually in melanoma are converted pigment spots on the skin, warts and mole - nevi - nevi. At the same time, pigment spots can change their color, shape and size, become asymmetrical, acquire uneven or blurred edges. The nevus may also become red, darker, or, conversely, discolored. Next to the nevi may appear other, with a similar structure. Factors such as injuries to benign skin neoplasms, irradiation of the skin with high doses of sunlight, interaction of the skin with carcinogenic chemicals may serve as triggers for this transformation.

Melanoma develops more frequently on some skin surfaces than on others. These areas include the face, chest and limbs. It is less common for melanoma to occur on the skin of feet, toes and palms. It is possible that a tumor may appear on the mucous membranes - conjunctiva of the eyes, mucous membrane of the mouth, even in the vagina and the anus (whether it is necessary to say that such localization of the tumor is highly unlikely to be detected).

Lentigome-melanoma is a variety of melanoma. It has been growing for a relatively long time, but looks like solar lentigo, seborrheic keratosis, pigmented actinic keratosis and red lichen. The appearance of black nodules in formations of this type indicates their transition to the next stage.

Most often this type of tumor occurs in people with light skin, with a small amount of melanin, especially if they live in the southern regions, where there is a lot of bright sun. People of the Caucasian race are much more likely to have melanoma than indigenous people on the African continent.

Treatment of melanoma, like other skin malignant tumours, is usually surgical. Chemotherapy and radiation therapy can also be used.

The following classification of melanoma stages is used in oncology:

1. Stage Development of disease Five-year survival rate
2. 0 stage of the tumor is localized in the epidermis surface layer 95%
3. Stage 1 tumor diameter is less than 2 mm, it affects all skin layers, there is no metastasis of 90%
4. Stage 2 - tumor diameter up to 4 mm, no metastasis 50%
5. Stage 3: metastasis into lymph nodes 30%
6. Stage 4: metastasis to internal organs, general intoxication of the body

Skin appendage tumors

Other skin cancers are much less common, accounting for a fraction of all skin cancers. These can be sweat and sebaceous gland tumours (adenocarcinoma), tumours from the tissues that make up the follicles, and metastases in the skin from other tumours. Determining the type of tumor in these cases can only be done with diagnostic procedures such as MRI, computed tomography and biopsy.

Adenocarcinoma

Adenocarcinoma is a rare type of skin cancer. It develops from glandular cells (sweat and sebaceous glands) and grows slowly. Looks like a dense knot of blue-violet color or towering over the skin of the daddy, formed in the armpit area, in the groin, under the breasts of women.

The node is characterized by slow growth, but in some cases it can reach large sizes (8-10 cm). Deep germination outside the skin tissue and metastases are rare. After removal, the tumor may relapse at the same location.

Verrucose carcinoma

Verrucose carcinoma of the skin is a rare type of tumor, a kind of squamous cell carcinoma. Appears on the skin of the hands, appearance resembles a wart, which makes it difficult to diagnose at an early stage of the disease. However, these formations can bleed, which allows you to pay attention to them in time.

Pre-cancerous skin conditions

There are obligate precancerous skin diseases - those that are converted into malignant tumors with a 100% probability (only a question of time),

They are:

1. Pegeta's disease,
2. Bowen's disease,
3. Kair's erythroplasia,
4. pigmented xeroderma.
5. Optional forms of precancerous skin diseases are those that often turn into malignant, but not always.

These include:

1. Chronic dermatitis of various etiologies;
2. keratoacantoma;
3. senile disceratosis;
4. chronic trophic ulcers;
5. post-burn scars;
6. giant nevus;
7. complex pigmented nevi;
8. nevus Ota;
9. dysplastic nevi;
10. birthmarks, papillomas and warts if they are constantly traumatized.

Bowen's disease

Bowen's disease is an early stage cancer in which tumor cells do not sprout through the epidermis. Externally, the disease looks like scaly red plaques covered with crust. It may resemble eczema or psoriasis, fungal skin disease. The size of the formation in the initial stage is approximately 2 cm.

Peget's disease looks like Bowen's. Tumors of this type are usually located near the nipples and on the genitals.

Skin horn

Skin horn is a pathological process that almost always turns into squamous cell cancer. Skin cancer, its initial stage has the form of a small red spot or cones with horny scales. Over time, a yellow skin growth may begin to form, which gradually becomes higher and higher. However, this type of tumour is not common on the skin, mainly in the elderly.

Keratoacantoma

Kerathoacantoma is considered to be a precancerous condition that can be converted into a flat cell type of skin cancer quite often. It has a hemispherical shape with a diameter from 0.5 to 2 cm. It can appear and grow to large sizes in a few weeks. This skin tumor is dense and rough, and may also have a yellow growth. 

Actinic keratosis

Acute (solar) keratosis is a pre-cancerous disease of the skin, which in 20% of cases turns into a malignant squamous cell tumor. Typically, tumors in this form of disease are located in groups, which increases the chances of their malignization (degeneration into malignant tumors). Externally, they look like flat, red, peeling plaques on the skin, often covered with yellow crust. They are easily confused with older keratoms. They are usually found on the head, neck, or arms.

Displastic nevus

Plastic nevi is a benign skin formation that has a high risk of becoming malignant. Signs of dysplastic nevi are the lack of symmetry in its shape, uneven edges, etc. The larger the size of the nevus, the more likely it is to be reborn. Particularly dangerous are nevuses with dark inclusions.

Diagnosis of disease

Determining the type of neoplasm on the skin and the peculiarities of its development is not an easy task. It is also necessary to determine how strongly the neighbouring organs are involved in the pathological process. Of course, it is not enough to analyze the patient's complaints and history alone.

The most important method of diagnosis is biopsy - taking a piece of tissue for analysis with subsequent microscopic examination. If not only the skin but also the lymph nodes are affected, it is necessary to take biological material from them for examination. In many cases, radioisotope methods and thermography are informative.

Procedures such as lung radiography, urography, abdominal ultrasound, MRI or brain and kidney CT, general blood and urine tests are also performed. All of this is necessary to determine the stage of the disease.

Treatment

The method of skin cancer treatment depends largely on the type, stage, location of the tumor, etc. Surgical treatment is most often used. Sometimes the tumor can be removed by such methods as cryodestruction, laser destruction, etc. The operation removes not only the tumor itself, but also a strip of adjacent skin up to 2 cm wide. If not only the skin but also the lymph nodes are affected, they should also be removed.

If the tumours are large enough (more than 2 cm), local skin irradiation may be used after removal. General exposure of the entire body is used to prevent metastases. Chemotherapy is used as an adjunctive treatment method.