Skin cancer is the most common cancer in the United States. The American Cancer Society estimates that, in 2005, 59,600 new cases of melanoma - the most dangerous of skin cancers - will be diagnosed, and 7,800 people will die from it.
Arizona, which gets 300 days a year of sunshine and blue skies, has the second-highest rate of skin cancer in the world, with Australia at number one. In the United States, malignant melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer, has increased more than 100 percent in the last 32 years.
Melanoma begins in the melanocytes cells, which make melanin, the pigment that determines our natural skin color. Melanoma is much more serious than basal and squamous cell carcinomas. It can spread quickly to other organs and causes three-fourths of U.S. skin cancer deaths.
Melanomas usually develop on or around an existing mole. Since the cells usually continue to make melanin, melanoma tumors are often brown or black.
Common places for melanoma to occur are on men's trunks and women's lower legs, but they can occur elsewhere, such as in the eye (ocular or intraocular melanomas). Rarely, melanoma shows up in the meniges (the membrane that covers the brain and the spinal marrow), the digestive tract, lymph nodes, or other areas where melanocytes are found.
In the first stage, melanoma begins as "melanoma in situ," meaning it doesn't grow much beyond the epidermis. If it is not removed when it is thin, the melanoma can penetrate deeply into the dermis and may spread throughout the body.
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