Squamous cell carcinoma is a topic well abbreviated to this SCC. Essentially squamous cell carcinoma is a malignant tumor of the skin and essentially what happens is that the epidermal cells when they have this malignant transformation they invade the dermis which lies beneath I’ll give you some key um distinctions between this and another type of skin cancer but SCC the second most common type of skin cancer, the most common number one is basal silk, the basal cell cancer presents a little bit differently so here are some characteristic details about SCC, the first thing that you look for is a non-healing lesion another thing that you look for that's a key factor is that the lesion appears on some part of the body that has exposure to the sun and in terms of the way it looks it's kind of variable. Still, some of the ways to describe it is a plaque, sometimes with scales and you can call it scaly or crusted.
We'll show you a picture uh during the clinical vignettes and then eventually the tumor or the skin lesion ulcerates and invades the underlying tissue so how do you actually diagnose other than the clinical presentation well without a doubt the most important thing is the biopsy, then the biopsy will show the type of cells and confirm that this actually is a malignant tumor of the epidermal cells and if it's caught early and it's small then the prognosis is excellent but unfortunately if it's a late stage disease then it's likely to metastasize over the course of time.
The five-year survival rate is only 34 percent so as you can see even skin cancer can cause mortality in a large number of patients if it's not identified early, treatment there are several types of surgical techniques and they're called destructive techniques and essentially one of the most common ones is just the bare surgical excision sometimes radiation is used if it's a very aggressive type of skin cancer so let's finally take a look at a picture of this so this is a classic photo of squamous cell carcinoma as you can see. It's in the lower lip area the vermilion border which is the area where a woman would apply the lipstick in case you're wondering what the vermilion border is and there's a clinical vignette associated with this so let's take a look at a 58-year old man comes to the office because of a lesion of the lip which is shown above the patient says that he has had this lesion for about nine months he has not seen a physician for five years and he's in the office today only because my wife made me come on the physical exam the lower lip is fixed to the anterior aspect of the mandible.
The most likely diagnosis is well this is a very characteristic presentation of squamous cell carcinoma the lip is being fixed to the surrounding tissues which is also very characteristic of squamous cell carcinoma so the answer is! this is the number one most common cause of skin cancer. Still, basal cell carcinomas appear pearly and encourage you to look up pictures of basal cell carcinoma so you can kind of differentiate between the two the next one a blonde blue-eyed 69 hero sailor has a non-healing indolent 1.5centimeter ulcer on the lower lip arising from the vermilion border the ulcer has been present and growing for the past eight months he is a pipe smoker. Still, he has no history of alcohol or drug abuse physical exam shows whether beaten facial skin. Still, no other ulcers there are no enlarged lymph nodes in his neck which of the following is the most likely diagnosis.
Well, the location of the skin lesion and the history are classic for squamous cell carcinoma they are telling you that he's out in the sun indirectly that he's a sailor that he has weather-beaten facial skin kind of to imply that this man spends a lot of time in the sun and there's no doubt that this is a squamous cell carcinoma.
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