Alternative Treatment Options for Skin Cancer

Alternative Treatment Options for Skin Cancer
By: Nishanth Reddy
If you someday become diagnosed with skin cancer and survive, one of the most worrisome issues you will face will be preventing a recurrence of the cancer. After successful treatment, your doctor will continue to schedule regular follow-up appointments to ensure that you remain skin cancer-free. Even regular medical attention is no substitute for exercising good skin care habits.

First, make sure to avoid any kind of prolonged exposure to the sun. This means that you should avoid the prime daylight hours of ten in the morning to two in the afternoon. If you must be out, always wear an appropriate sun block, and avoid direct exposure to the sun by wearing long-sleeved shirts, wide-brimmed hats, and light colors that help reflect the sun away from your body. Most importantly, to prevent a recurrence of skin cancer, you must conduct regular self-examinations, and consult your doctor immediately if you note any discolorations or suspicious moles or lesions.

But, that is not always enough and sometimes the unthinkable happens. So, if you are diagnosed with skin cancer you should know what your alternatives are. 

The most important objective in skin cancer treatment is to eliminate the growth and then contain the spread of the cancer. There are many alternatives that will be used depending on what the diagnosis is.

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Preventing Cancer

Preventing Cancer
By: Kieran Waldron
Governments throughout the world rarely tell their populations what the individual can do to prevent a disease occurring in the first instance. While all the emphasis is put on building more hospitals, better equipped hospitals and reducing waiting lists,  lowering the need for hospital space by preventing diseases largely gets ignored.

Cancer is a good example of a disease where its strike rate can be greatly reduced by the individual taking precautionary measures. The incidence of cancer can, in some cases, be reduced by more than 50% by taking simple preventative actions.

The first preventative measure that should be taken is adequate exposure to direct
sunlight.The effect of direct sunlight on the skin produces vitamin D, which is vital to good health. While some vitamin D can be obtained from food sources, the individual is unlikely to get enough from sources other than the sun. The exposure
for white people need only be 10-15 minutes a day 3 or 4 times a week. However,the further you live from the equator, the more exposure you need.It should be noted that people with dark skin pigmentation require 20 times the exposure stated above to create the same amount of vitamin D. Sufficient levels of vitamin D are crucial to calcium absorbtion in the intestines.

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HPV test may be better option for cervical cancer detection

A report on BBC News shares that the use of a different screening test other than smears may lead to the prevention of more deaths due to cervical cancer. This is only true, however, for women who belong to the above-35 age group.

A team of Italian researchers led by Dr. Guglielmo Ronco from the Centre for Cancer Prevention in Turin analyzed data on 95,000 women over a period of three and a half years. Results showed that those who were tested for the human papillomavirus (HPV) developed less cancers than women who were only tested using smears.

Testing for HPV can detect pre-cancerous changes to cervical cells, which means that the appropriate course of treatment can be started at an early stage. Dr. Leslie Walker, the director of cancer information at the Cancer Research UK said: “We might be able to spot the warning signs even earlier and it might, in future, mean that women go for screening less often.”

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The reduction of smoking in Europe has reduced deaths from cancer

The decline in smoking in Europe and the implementation of better controls have allowed fewer people die from cancer, although deaths among women by lung tumors are increasing in places like Scotland and Hungary, where more women smoke.

The early diagnosis and improved treatments involve a decrease in deaths from cervical cancer uterus and breast, while the lowest levels of smoking contributed to a good reduction in cancer deaths lung and other tumors related to smoking in men.

According to the Annals of Oncology, from 1990-1994 and 2000-2004, overall rates of cancer deaths in Europe fell 9 percent in men and 8 per cent for women in the second period, compared with the first.

Although there are large disparities in cancer death rates among countries of the European Union (EU).

The countries where alcohol consumption is increasing and snuff increases in registered deaths from cancer of the lung, mouth, pharynx and esophagus.

Measures to reduce alcohol consumption, improving nutrition, reducing obesity and increasing controls-in addition to early diagnosis and medical advances to treat cancer, also help to reduce the tumor burden in the EU.

Read more: The reduction of smoking in Europe has reduced deaths from cancer