10 skin cancer facts everyone needs to know

Melanoma is the dead­liest form of skin can­cer. And over the last decade, annu­al cas­es of melanoma have risen by almost 50% to over 287,000 world­wide. This equates to over 60,000 melanoma-relat­ed deaths glob­al­ly each year.

When com­bined with the inci­dence and mor­tal­i­ty rates for non-melanoma skin can­cers, the fig­ures become even more shock­ing. Over one mil­lion non-melanoma skin can­cers are diag­nosed every year. And while these types of skin can­cer are con­sid­ered less dan­ger­ous, there were still 65,000 non-melanoma skin can­cer relat­ed deaths record­ed in 2020.

When com­bined, these two sets of har­row­ing stats trans­late to 1 per­son dying of skin can­cer every 4 minutes.

Accord­ing to the report, men are 10% more like­ly to devel­op melanoma than women and 4% more like­ly to die from melanoma than women. But inter­est­ing­ly, men and women tend to devel­op melanoma in dif­fer­ent parts of the body. For men, melanoma is more like­ly to occur on the head, neck and tor­so, while women have a high­er inci­dence on their arms and legs.

skin cancer facts

It’s true that peo­ple with fair skin are more like­ly to devel­op skin can­cer. How­ev­er, this doesn’t mean that those with dark­er com­plex­ions aren’t at risk. In fact, stud­ies show that skin can­cers are often more fatal in those with dark skin. This is because they typ­i­cal­ly appear in less obvi­ous places and are diag­nosed at a more advanced stage, mak­ing treat­ment more difficult.

The report also showed that peo­ple who live in coun­tries with a high Human Devel­op­ment Index (HDI) score (that is, coun­tries like Aus­tralia and New Zealand that score high­ly in three basic aspects of human devel­op­ment: health, knowl­edge and stan­dard of liv­ing) are more like­ly to be diag­nosed with melanoma. Mean­while, peo­ple in coun­tries with a low­er HDI score are more like­ly to die from it.

How­ev­er, it’s impor­tant to note that underreport­ing in coun­tries with a low socioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus means we do not have a per­fect­ly clear pic­ture of skin can­cer and melanoma rates. This means the inci­dence of skin can­cer diag­noses and deaths could be much high­er than what is reported.

Melanoma and non-melanoma skin can­cer inci­dence rates are shown to increase with age. This is large­ly due to accu­mu­lat­ed sun expo­sure over a person’s life­time. But that doesn’t mean young peo­ple are immune — in fact, skin can­cer is extreme­ly com­mon in young people.

Skin can­cer is the lead­ing type of can­cer among men between the ages of 25 and 44 and the sec­ond most com­mon type of can­cer among women in this age group. The truth is that it doesn’t mat­ter how old or young you are. Skin can­cer can devel­op on any per­son at any age. It's important to note the role of Vitamin D in skin health and cancer prevention.

Since skin can­cer knows no age lim­it, these next stats are par­tic­u­lar­ly wor­ry­ing. The report found that young peo­ple aged 15 to 19 years take the biggest risks when it comes to sun safe­ty and use the least pro­tec­tion in the sun. What’s worse is that this age group grew up sur­round­ed by sun safe mes­sag­ing, mean­ing they should have a high aware­ness about the dan­gers of the sun.

Even if young peo­ple revert to sun safe behav­iour as they grow old­er, the dam­age may have already been done. The report states that if a child or ado­les­cent has expe­ri­enced just one blis­ter­ing sun­burn in their youth, their risk of devel­op­ing melanoma in lat­er life doubles.

skin cancer facts

One of the most dan­ger­ous skin can­cer facts high­light­ed by the report is that many peo­ple still believe that tanned skin is desirable:

• 61% of peo­ple believe hav­ing tanned skin is attractive
• 49% of peo­ple can­not imag­ine com­ing back from hol­i­days with­out being tanned

Yet, 92% of peo­ple know sun expo­sure can cause health prob­lems and 93% of peo­ple recog­nise that tan­ning accel­er­ates skin age­ing. The scary truth is that even if you don’t get sun­burn and your skin tans in the sun, harm­ful UV rays can still cause skin cell dam­age. Tan­ning is just a reac­tion which aims to achieve high­er pro­tec­tion for your skin cells in future.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we live in a time where being tanned is con­sid­ered​‘cool’ and desir­able — and it will take major social change to shift this per­cep­tion. But the bot­tom line is that pro­longed expo­sure to the sun puts you at high­er risk of devel­op­ing skin can­cer. So, what bet­ter rea­son to embrace the nat­ur­al, untanned appear­ance of your skin?

The more com­mon moles you have, the high­er your risk of devel­op­ing skin can­cer or melanoma. Accord­ing to the Can­cer Coun­cil, a meta-analy­sis of 46 stud­ies found that hav­ing between 101 – 120 com­mon moles presents a high­er risk for melanoma. In fact, the risk was almost sev­en times greater for those with such a high num­ber of moles than those with very few (10−15) moles.

What’s espe­cial­ly con­cern­ing is that the mes­sage about reg­u­lar skin can­cer checks just isn’t get­ting through in most coun­tries. A skin can­cer pre­ven­tion study by Ipsos for La Roche-Posay showed that:

• Only 11% of peo­ple world­wide have their moles checked by a der­ma­tol­o­gist at least once a year
• Only 33% of peo­ple world­wide self-check their moles at least once a year — yet der­ma­tol­o­gists rec­om­mend self-check­­ing every month

Your skin can­cer reminder: Check ear­ly, check often

There’s no doubt that a lot of these stats and facts about skin can­cer are scary — but the good news is that both melanoma and non-melanoma skin can­cers can be eas­i­ly treat­ed when diag­nosed early.

The rec­om­men­da­tions are sim­ple: check your own skin every four weeks and get reg­u­lar pro­fes­sion­al skin check every year. And if you have a lot of moles or are at a high­er risk of devel­op­ing skin can­cer you can check your per­son­al risk lev­el with our quick quiz, our com­pre­hen­sive full body mole check will help you keep a close eye on your spots and mon­i­tor for any chances.