What Does Skin Cancer Look Like?

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07/10/23

Dr. Lisa Pruett explains what to look for when determining if you have skin cancer. She explains non-melanoma type skin cancers and melanoma type skin cancers.

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There are many versions of skin cancer. Let's divide it into two categories. Non-melanoma skin cancers are the most common skin cancers that we see. I see them on a daily basis. The newest statistic is that one out of every five Americans will have a skin cancer in their lifetime so they're very common. Basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma are this category. And so what these look like on the skin they're usually pink. It's usually a bump on the skin. It can be a new bump that's growing that might be a little bit sore or painful to the touch. It might look like a wart but it hurts. It can also look like a pink shiny patch on the skin. It could have little blood vessels that you see in the surface. Sometimes they're not even pink but skin colored but it's just a new bump on the skin. They could be very slow-growing so you might even have it on your skin for a year or two and not even know anything is wrong with it until it continues to grow. They can bleed. They can kind of form scabs. So I tell my patients if you have a bump on your skin that you think might be a bug bite or a pimple but it's not going away after about a month then it probably needs to be checked by a board-certified dermatologist. The other category of skin cancer is melanoma.

Melanoma is a much more dangerous form of skin cancer. So a melanoma we use the ABCDE and sometimes F rules for describing those. So A is for asymmetry. If a mole looks asymmetrical you need to have a board certified dermatologist look at it. B is for border. If it has an irregular border it needs to be examined. C is for color so if it has different shades of brown, if it's changing color, if it has different colors sometimes black or even blue in the mole then it needs to be looked at. D is for diameter if it's bigger than the head of a pencil eraser which is about 6 millimeters it definitely needs to be looked at but I have found melanomas that are 3 millimeters so you can have a very small brown new spot that looks a little funny and it could be something that needs to be checked. E is for evolving so these are cancers they are growing over time. They can be very slow growing or they can be fast growing. So if you have a mole that's been there for a long time but it is slowly changing a little bit that needs to be looked at. And then F is for funny looking so if you step back and look at your skin and then there's one spot that just looks funny, just doesn't match with all of your other spots then that needs to be looked at by a board certified dermatologist. So I recommend to my patients that you should come in for an annual skin exam so that we can check all of your spots. We all have spots on our skin. They should be checked, you should have a baseline exam by a dermatologist and then get checked every year to see if you're in that one out of every five Americans that is going to get a skin cancer at some point.