Skin cancer and the power of the sun: not only in view of the ozone hole, sunbathing contributes to the fact that the danger of harmful effects for humans increases. In the wake of this, there have been repeated reports in the media in recent years of alarming growth rates in skin cancer. But there are different forms of skin cancer – where the sun and the sun’s rays are very clear causes.
Skin cancer: forms and types such as melanoma, basal cell carcinoma, spinalioma.
The term skin cancer is a collective name for other malignant diseases of the skin. The forms of skin cancer have partly different triggers, differ in frequency, course as well as prognosis and are treated with different therapy.
- By far the best known is probably the black skin cancer, the malignant melanoma.
- More common than malignant melanoma are basal cell carcinoma (basal cell carcinoma) and squamous cell carcinoma (spinalioma, spindle cell carcinoma). These two forms of skin cancer are also grouped under the term white or light skin cancer.
For all forms of skin cancer, the incidence has increased in recent times. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one assumes in the white skin cancer of about two to three million annually, in the black skin cancer (malignant melanoma) of 130,000 new cases worldwide.
Incidence of skin cancer
In Germany, malignant melanoma accounts for not quite 4 percent of all malignant tumors – statistically, every 50th person develops black skin cancer, women more often than men.
The illness numbers with the bright skin cancer are not seized Germany-far, are however higher – annually estimated with approximately 213,000 persons.
Basal cell carcinoma (basalioma) occurs about five times more frequently than squamous cell carcinoma (spinalioma). However, mortality is much higher for black skin cancer.
Rare forms of skin cancer
In addition, there are rarer forms of skin cancer that can develop from various structures of the skin. These include, for example, malignant tumors
- Of the connective tissue (fibrosarcomas),
- Of the sweat or sebaceous glands,
- Of the vascular cells (angiosarcomas),
- Of the muscles (myosarcomas),
- Of the palpatory cells (Merkel cell carcinomas), and
- Kaposi’s sarcoma, which often occurs in AIDS.
According to many experts, skin cancer does not include cutaneous lymphomas – tumors that have typical skin lesions but originate in the cells of the blood and bone marrow.
