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If you or your loved one has been diagnosed with skin cancer, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center is ready to help. Our experienced team of doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals is dedicated to providing the highest-quality treatment, counseling, and follow-up care for patients with melanoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and basal cell carcinoma.
Skin Cancer
Each year more than a million people in the United States are diagnosed with the most common forms of skin cancer: basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma. These two diseases are typically grouped as non-melanoma skin cancers.
Most people who are diagnosed with non-melanoma skin cancers are age 50 or older, but because these diseases often are a result of too much exposure to the sun accumulated over time, everyone -- even the youngest toddlers -- should take precautions against them.
Melanoma is the most aggressive type of skin cancer. Accounting for only about 4 percent of all skin cancers in the United States, the lifetime melanoma risk for the average American is about 1 percent. However, a combination of genetics, environment, and lifestyle can make the development of melanoma much more common in some people.
Sunlight & Skin Cancer
Ultraviolet (UV) radiation is the single most important cause of skin cancer, especially when overexposure results in sunburn and blistering. Other, less common causes of skin cancer include repeated exposure to x-rays and exposure to coal tar, arsenic, and other industrial compounds, as well as burns, scars, and other skin conditions.
Sunlight provides much that is beneficial and even necessary to life and good health, such as vitamin D. Tanning and burning, however, are not among those benefits -- there is no such thing as a "healthy tan." In fact, the tanning response begins only after DNA in skin cells has been damaged by exposure to sunlight.
Fortunately there are ways to prevent most non-melanoma skin cancers and to detect them early when they do arise. When treated early, the vast majority of these cancers are curable.
