As the sun gets higher, public health event offers free skin cancer screening

Stanford Report, May 12, 2004

As the sun gets higher, public health event offers free skin cancer screening
More than half of all new cancers are skin cancer

By QUINN EASTMAN

The arrival of summer is an annual reminder of the sun's negative effect on skin. If you have a suspicious mole or mark, an annual medical center event can help you learn whether it's skin cancer. When doctors discover skin cancers early, it makes a critical difference in treatment.

The dermatology department is offering a free skin cancer screening Saturday at the Stanford Health Library from 9 a.m. to noon on a first-come, first-served basis. The Health Library is located in the Stanford Shopping Center next to Bloomingdale's, facing El Camino Real. No registration is necessary.

"We want to encourage at-risk individuals to attend," said Susan Swetter, MD, assistant professor of dermatology, who is coordinating the screening. She urged older individuals with fair skin, people who have a history of excessive sun exposure or those with many moles or changing marks on their skin to attend. Those groups have the highest risk for skin cancer, added Swetter, director of the Pigmented Lesion and Cutaneous Melanoma Clinic at Stanford.

More than half of all new cancers are skin cancers, and more than 1 million new cases will be diagnosed in the United States this year, according to the American Academy of Dermatology. Around 4 percent of those cases are the most dangerous kind: melanoma. The incidence of melanoma has more than tripled among Americans in the last 20 years. Melanomas occur in people with all skin types.

More than 95,000 people will develop melanoma this year and almost 8,000 will die from the disease. Melanoma may appear similar to a brownish mole but is often asymmetric, changing in size or elevation, or has variations in color (brown, black, reddish or white). Non-melanoma types of skin cancer often look like nonhealing, reddish sores on skin that that has the most exposure to the sun.

The only known preventive measure against melanoma is sun protection in childhood. Ultraviolet rays in sunlight damage the DNA in skin cells, causing the cells to turn into melanoma years later.

Swetter estimated that people receive around 80 percent of the damage to the skin cells' DNA before age 20. She recommends staying indoors when the sun's rays are strongest (between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.) and using sun-protective clothing and sunscreen with a sun-protection factor, or SPF, of 15 or higher when outdoors. Sunscreen should be reapplied frequently (about every two hours) when swimming or exercising, she added.

Cancer screening offered for free (5/7/03)

Inheritance a key risk factor for most cancers, study shows (7/11/01)