Is it a sunspot or could it be skin cancer?

Here’s one of the major dif­fer­ences: sunspots tend to crop up on areas of your skin that have had a lot of sun expo­sure over the years. On the oth­er hand, melanoma — the fastest grow­ing and most dead­ly form of skin can­cer — can appear any­where, even in areas with no sun expo­sure or lim­it­ed expo­sure to UV rays.

The oth­er key dif­fer­ence is hard­er to detect with an untrained eye. A sunspot forms when the melanocytes over­pro­duce pig­ment in a tiny area of your skin, while skin can­cer forms when the cells them­selves repro­duce in an abnor­mal and rapid fash­ion. Even­tu­al­ly, these can­cer­ous cells can spread to oth­er areas of your body (a process called metas­ta­sis) and can be life-threatening.

The trou­ble is that the dif­fer­ence between a benign skin change and ear­ly skin can­cer can be very sub­tle, which is why we rec­om­mend hav­ing your skin checked by an expert skin can­cer detec­tion ser­vice at a specialised MoleMap skin cancer clinic every year.

Sunspots are con­sid­ered to be harm­less, ran­dom marks on the skin that do not become can­cer­ous. How­ev­er, this doesn’t mean they should be ignored. In order to devel­op sunspots, your skin must have had pro­longed expo­sure to the sun and the dam­age from UV expo­sure increas­es your risk of skin can­cer over time. This means that if you have sunspots, you may be more sus­cep­ti­ble to devel­op­ing skin cancer.

If you’ve noticed any new spots appear­ing on your skin or are con­cerned your sunspots may be some­thing more sus­pi­cious, be sure to have them pro­fes­sion­al­ly checked by a der­ma­tol­o­gist or melanog­ra­ph­er as soon as possible.

When assess­ing your sunspots, it’s also impor­tant to con­sid­er your per­son­al skin can­cer risk fac­tors. You may be at a high­er risk of devel­op­ing skin can­cer if you have any of the following:

• Fair skin
• Nat­u­ral­ly light-coloured hair, such as blonde or red
• A large num­ber of moles all over your skin
• Had seri­ous sun­burns or pro­longed sun exposure
• Fam­i­ly his­to­ry or per­son­al his­to­ry of skin cancer

You can also check your per­son­al risk of devel­op­ing skin can­cer by tak­ing our free quiz.

Regard­less of whether your skin can­cer risk fac­tor is high or low, it’s impor­tant that you check your own skin reg­u­lar­ly to mon­i­tor for any irreg­u­lar­i­ties or changes in your sunspots — or any spots on your skin, for that mat­ter. Know­ing what’s nor­mal on your skin (and what’s not) is key to ear­ly detec­tion and treat­ment of skin cancer.

We rec­om­mend check­ing your skin your­self (or ask­ing some­one to check it for you) at least every two to three months. Know­ing the ABCDE and EFG guide­lines below can help you iden­ti­fy the ear­ly signs of skin cancer:

• Asym­me­try: If you draw an invis­i­ble line down the cen­tre of a non-can­cer­ous growth, the two sides will be almost iden­ti­cal in most cas­es; with skin can­cer, the two sides will look different.

• Bor­ders: Non-can­cer­ous growths tend to have smooth edges or bor­ders while skin can­cers usu­al­ly have irreg­u­lar borders.

• Colour: While most moles are one con­sis­tent colour, skin can­cers tend to have more than one colour, like red, brown, black, pink or even blue.

• Diam­e­ter: Most melanomas have a diam­e­ter larg­er than a pen­cil (about 6mm), how­ev­er, some melanomas can be quite small, espe­cial­ly in their ear­ly stages.

• Evo­lu­tion: Any spot or growth that changes in size, shape, colour or any oth­er char­ac­ter­is­tic is more like­ly to be a melanoma.

Recent­ly, the Can­cer Coun­cil announced an update to the diag­no­sis guide­lines to include ele­va­tion, firm­ness and growth (EFG):

• Ele­vat­ed: The mole is raised above the skin — how­ev­er, remem­ber melanoma doesn’t have to be elevated.

• Firm: The spot is sol­id to the touch, firmer than the sur­round­ing skin and doesn’t flat­ten if pressed how­ev­er remem­ber Melanoma doesn’t have to be firm.

• Grow­ing: The mole is grad­u­al­ly get­ting larger.

While the ABCDE and EFG guide­lines are a good start­ing point for eval­u­at­ing a sus­pi­cious spot, the dif­fer­ences between a sunspot and ear­ly skin can­cer can extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to detect with­out prop­er med­ical train­ing. Even your doc­tor might have trou­ble detect­ing ear­ly skin can­cer at a glance.

Only a spe­cial­ist skin-map­ping ser­vice such as MoleMap Australian skin cancer clinics has the exper­tise and tech­nol­o­gy to detect the sub­tle dif­fer­ences between benign sunspots and can­cer­ous growths such as basal cell car­ci­no­ma, squa­mous cell car­ci­no­ma, and melanoma — which is why we rec­om­mend choos­ing a reg­u­lar, spe­cial­ist skin can­cer check up.

Even though sunspots can be pretty ugly, they’re actually doing you a favour by showing up. Sunspots mean that you’ve had a lot of sun exposure during your lifetime and that your risk of developing skin cancer is probably elevated — possibly very elevated.

So, while sunspots may be benign, they’re a good reminder to book a skin and mole check every year.

And if you have any suspicious moles or sunspots that are changing, book a mole check or skin check straight away.