Now that the festive season is behind us and we’ve all had our fun in the sun, don’t let all the measures you’ve taken towards sun safety go to waste.
Picture: 80 percent of sun damage occurs before age 18
Protecting your skin against the harmful rays of the sun only goes halfway against preventing cancer. The other half is doing regular skin checks to ensure you nip any worrying skin issues in the bud early.
Peter Jordan, Principal Officer of Fedhealth, says you should examine your skin head to toe once a month, looking for any suspicious lesions.
“Self-exams can help you detect potential skin cancers early enough to be completely cured. If melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, is recognised and treated early, it is almost always curable, but if it is not, the cancer can advance and spread to other parts of the body where it becomes hard to treat and can be fatal.”
Often resembling moles, the majority of melanomas are black or brown, but they can also be skin-coloured, pink, red, purple, blue or white.
“As a general rule, to spot either melanomas or non-melanoma skin cancers, take note of any new moles or growths, and any existing growths that begin to grow or change significantly in anyway. Lesions that change, itch, bleed or don’t heal are also alarm signals,” he adds.
Once a melanoma is diagnosed, the first step in treatment is the removal of the melanoma – the standard method being by cutting it out. Surgery has made great advances in the past decade, and much less tissue is removed than in the past. Patients do just as well after the lesser surgery, which is easier to tolerate and produces a smaller scar.
Yet even if you check your skin regularly, sun protection remains essential to skin cancer prevention – as about 90 percent of non-melanoma skin cancers and 65 percent of melanomas are associated with exposure to UV radiation from the sun.
“Always protect yourself and stay safe,” concludes Jordan.