Actinic keratosis are some of the pre-cancerous skin disorders around. Even though they are pre-cancerous in nature, actually few of them actually turn to cancer , even those that turn to cancer often take several years to complete such transformation. Actinic keratosis is also referred to as squamous cell carcinoma and it is an infection that must be treated at an early stage to prevent it from getting worse and transforming into skin cancer. Most patients who suffer from actinic keratosis often claim that they rarely stay long in the sun, but they tend to forget that actinic keratosis is the effect of the accumulation o sun ray effect on the skin over the years.
Actinic keratosis is characterized with the formation of some small, rough edge growths on the skin. Even short periods of sunlight exposure { around 15 minutes a day} may lead to actinic keratosis in the near future. Actinic keratosis often become a potential spreading skin infection only if the growths have gone further deep into the skin, actinic keratosis sometimes may be referred to as solar keratosis and the first diagnostic approach is to examine the growths physically.
Actinic keratosis often occur among fair skin people and common places where they grow include; scalp, face, upper chest , back of the neck, and then the top of the hand and forearms. Though minimizing sun exposure through the use of sunscreen is one o the best possible ways of controlling the infection , it is however almost impossible to protect all the parts of the body from sun light exposure. Some of the possible ways of treating the infection are; Photo-dynamic surgery, cryo-surgery, burning off the keratosis growth, and Laser surgery.
Though physical examination can be used in identifying actinic keratosis, however when the growths have become thick and large, then a biopsy may need to be conducted to ascertain if it is likely to develop into skin cancer or not. It is essential to conduct a clinical biopsy because seborrheic keratosis which appear to be similar to actinic keratosis and also result from excessive sun exposure might be present. Seborrheic keratosis are not cancerous in nature , hence actinic treatment may be different from the way seborrheic keratosis is treated.
Actinic keratosis can be prevented from becoming cancerous by treating it at the very onset, it must be treated even if it is not growing out of the skin.
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