What Is Actinic Keratosis?

Transcript

Actinic keratosis is a pre-cancer found in the epidermis, which is the scientific name for skin. Actinic keratosis looks like a scaly spot on the skin. You’ll wanna treat actinic keratosis in order to prevent it from turning into squamous cell non lymphoma skin cancer. There’s a 0.1 to 10% chance that an actinic keratosis will turn into cancer.

The good news is that they are really slow growing. So you do have the luxury of time. They have a low transformation rate, meaning they don’t turn into cancer for months or even years.

A seborrheic keratosis is a different kind of growth on the skin that is also scaly, but it’s not related to sun exposure and it is not precancerous. There’s zero chance that it will turn into cancer, but you may want to treat seborrheic keratosis because it’s unsightly.

Key Takeaways

1. Actinic keratosis is a pre-cancer found in the epidermis and looks like a scaly spot on the skin.

2. It’s important to treat actinic keratosis before it turns into squamous cell non lymphoma skin cancer.

3. They are really slow growing – they don’t turn into cancer for months or even years.

4. A seborrheic keratosis is a different kind of growth that is also scaly, but is not related to sun exposure or and won’t become cancer.