Title: What Is Skin Melanoma?
Melanoma is a serious kind of skin cancer that can affect our skin, but also spread to your bones and organs.
Melanoma is cured by spending too much time under the sun, causing normal skin cells to become abnormal. Once these cells are effected, they rapidly grow out of control and attack the tissues around them. Studies have shown that melanoma runs in your familial DNA.
So how do you know if you have melanoma? The main sign is a change in a mole or other skin growth such as with a birthmark. A change in size, shape and color of a mole may also be a sign of melanoma since it can grow within both a mole or a birthmark. However, melanomas usually form in unmarked skin and could be found anywhere on the body. Many times, they can be found on the upper back of men and the legs of women.
If you’re unsure what melanoma looks like, they resemble flat, brown or black moles with uneven edges, usually containing irregular shapes. Basically, one half of the mole doesn’t match the other. Melanoma can often change color, be lumpy or rounded shape, and even bleed or be crusty.
In order to diagnose melanoma, your doctor will have to check your skin and likely remove a sample of tissue from the area around the melanoma. If your test proves positive for melanoma, you may need to have more tests to find out if it has spread to your lymph nodes.
For treatment if you do have melanoma, the most common procedure is surgery, which may be the only treatment you may need for early-stage melanomas that have not spread to other parts of the body. However, those scars can be removed as well.