Skin cancer (overview)

Colloquially used, not clearly defined, general term for a malignant swelling of the skin.

For the individual groups of diseases see under:

• Carcinoma, cutaneous
• Basal cell carcinoma
• malignant melanoma
• lymphoma, cutaneous

Other malignancies of the skin

• M. Paget
• Angiosarcoma
• Merkel cell carcinoma
• Fibrosarcoma
• Liposarcoma
• Metastases of internal tumours in the skin

In colloquial language the term "skin cancer" is often equated with "malignant melanoma", the black skin cancer. The malignant melanoma starts from the pigment cells of the skin. However, malignant melanoma only affects the smallest part of the numerous types of skin cancer in humans.

The most common skin cancer is the light or white skin cancer. The light skin cancer originates from the so-called epithelial cells of the skin. The most common light skin cancer is basal cell carcinoma, followed by squamous cell carcinoma and other subgroups. 2 larger studies from Denmark indicate a cumulative dose-dependent relationship between HCT (hydrochlorothiazide) and non-melanocytic skin cancer. For the basal cell carcinoma the disease risk increases 1.3-fold, for the squamous cell carcinoma 4-7.7-fold.

Recently, the term "non melanoma skin cancer" has been increasingly used to distinguish it from"malignant melanoma". The main representatives of this group of malignant skin tumours, which according to their historical names literally include all non-melanocytic malignant skin tumours, are basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma.

In addition, there is a large number of different types of skin cancer, which are derived from the various skin components, e.g. from the skin connective tissue (sarcomas of the skin), from the skin vessels(angiosarcomas), the skin nerves, the skin appendages such as sweat and sebaceous glands, from specialized cell systems such as the Merkel cells(Merkel cell carcinoma) or the white blood cells(lymphomas of the skin).