Skin health and protection

After your skin check: what next?

After your skin check, you should have a plan to:

  1. manage current issues (e.g. skin cancers, suspicious spots, rashes)
  2. enable early diagnosis of skin cancers if they occur
  3. reduce your risk of new skin cancers developing, by avoiding unnecessary ultraviolet exposure and using sunscreen
  4. treat existing sun damage to your skin

There are many strategies; your skin protection plan should choose the ones that work best for you.

Manage current issues

Skin lesions (spots, lumps or rashes) that you have noticed or that have been detected by your doctor during a skin check may need treatment to cure them or reduce the risk of serious skin cancer.

  • Lesions that your doctor believes are skin cancer
  • Lesions that have suspicious features and require a biopsy for diagnosis and/or determining further treatment
  • Pre-cancerous lesions that might develop into skin cancer if untreated
  • Skin conditions that make diagnosing and treating skin cancers difficult

Your doctor will manage the issue by recommending or prescribing treatment, and sometimes by treating the lesion during your consultation.

You might need to return to the clinic for a procedure, or for a repeat examination after applying a cream or taking medication.

Follow-up visits

One of the ways your doctor can diagnose early skin cancers is to monitor how unusual skin lesions over time. So if your doctor recommends a follow-up check up, ensure you keep your appointment as the examination is part of the early detection process.

Your doctor might have identified low-risk spots that probably are not skin cancer, but don't look entirely normal. If this happens, you will probably be asked to return to the clinic for follow-up examination and photography of these atypical spots.

Today's UV index

More information

References

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