What is Pre-Cancer?
In many cases, the symptoms that a patient presents to his or her dermatologist is not skin cancer but a pre-cancer or actinic keratosis. Actinic keratosis is a precancerous growth that appears as a scaly, crusty growth on a patient’s skin. These growths generally appear in only one area of the body, such as the forehead, scalp, face or hands.
Actinic keratosis is caused by frequent exposure to the sun and often appears in conjunction with other solar skin damage. These growths are classified as premalignant and can usually be diagnosed by a routine skin examination by a doctor, but a biopsy might be performed for larger growths to confirm that the growth is not cancerous. Actinic keratosis can be treated by one of many topical therapies and is often removed by photodynamic treatment or cryosurgery.