Brief Description of Melanoma and It’s Evolution among Men and Women

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Melanoma is an autosomal dominant disease which means that if you are to inherit it, the person before you would have had to have not one but two copies of the gene. If the melanoma is inherited it is called “familial malignant melanoma. If one of your parents had the two copies then you have a 50-50 chance of getting it. According to cancer.net, “Overall, about 8% of people newly diagnosed with melanoma have a first-degree relative with melanoma.” Also cancer.net says, “About 10% of people with melanoma have a family history of the disease. If a person has a close relative (parent, brother, sister, or child) who has been diagnosed with melanoma, his or her risk of developing melanoma is 2 to 3 times higher than the average risk.”When testing for melanoma, sometimes it can be as easy as looking at your skin, but the best way to diagnose it is to do a biopsy. The doctors do this by simply removing a part or all the mole and analyzing it. There are three different types of biopsies: punch, excisional, and incisional. A punch biopsy is a circular tool that they use to press into the mole to take a part of it out. An excisional biopsy and incisional biopsy are the same thing except that the excisional biopsy takes the whole mole while the incisional takes part of it.

Evolution

At a younger age, females have a greater chance of getting melanoma while men have a higher chance as they get older. According to the Skin Cancer Foundation, “From age 50 on, significantly more men develop melanoma than women. The majority of people who develop melanoma are white men over age 55. But until age 49, significantly more white women develop melanoma than white men (one in 150 women versus one in 215 men). Overall, one in 27 white men and one in 40 white women will develop melanoma in their lifetime.” While women can develop melanoma at younger age men are twice as likely to dies from melanoma at any age. Researchers aren’t exactly sure why men have a greater chance of getting it but some say it’s due to them not knowing as much. Several different surveys have concluded that women know more about melanoma than men do. Women also tend to apply sunscreen more than men as well as wear cosmetics which tend to have SPF in it. Although this is all a pretty accurate explanation, this can’t account for all men because women also use tanning beds and those who use them have a 34% increased risk of getting melanoma than those who don’t. The Skin Cancer Foundation says, “The estimated five-year melanoma survival rate for black patients is only 65 percent, versus 91 percent for whites.” This can be due to the black community not being able to get the proper medical treatments or checkups needed. Although this is true, skin cancer accounts for 1 to 2 percent of all cancers in blacks.

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